Taunton’s

Cabins & Cottages

and Other Small Spaces

Editors of Fine Homebuilding

 Taunton’s

Cabins & Cottages

and Other Small Spaces

Editors of Fine Homebuilding

t
Text © 2014 by The Taunton Press, Inc.
Photographs © 2014 by The Taunton Press, Inc.
Illustrations © 2014 by The Taunton Press, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Pp
The Taunton Press, Inc., 63 South Main Street, PO Box 5506, Newtown, CT 06470-5506
e-mail: tp@taunton.com

Editors: Christina Glennon

Copy editor: Seth Reichgott
Indexer: Jim Curtis
Interior design: carol singer | notice design and Lynne Phillips
Layout: carol singer | notice design
Cover photographers: Main image Brian Vanden Brink. Top images from left to right: Brian Vanden Brink,
Bill Seitz, Kent Peterson, Nat Rea, and Bill Seitz.

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The following names/manufacturers appearing in Cabins & Cottages and Other Small Spaces are trademarks: Alape , Andersen , ®
® ® ® ® ® ® ® ® ® ®
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cabins & cottages and other small spaces / editors of Fine Homebuilding.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-62710-745-7
ISBN 978-1-63186-023-2 (e-book)
1. House construction. 2. Dwellings--Remodeling. 3. Log cabins. 4. Cottages. I. Fine homebuilding. II. Title: Cabins and cottages
and other small spaces.
TH4811.C33 2014
728'.37--dc23
2014016476

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About Your Safety: Homebuilding is inherently dangerous. From accidents with power tools to falls from ladders, scaffolds, and
roofs, builders risk serious injury and even death. We try to promote safe work habits through our articles. But what is safe for one
person under certain circumstances may not be safe for you under different circumstances. So don’t try anything you learn about
here (or elsewhere) unless you’re certain that it is safe for you. Please be careful.

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 acknowledgments

Special thanks to the authors, editors, art directors,

copy editors, and other staff members of Fine Homebuilding
and Inspired House who contributed to the development
of the articles in this book.
 part 4

Contents
2 How Much Space Do You Really Need?

part 1 part 2

9 Cabins 49 Cottages
10 A Big Little House on the Ridge 50 A Garden Cottage for
Low-Impact Living
16 Raising the Baby Barn
21 Did Starting Small Work Out? 58 The Second Time Around

28 63 Small Cottage Makes a Big Splash

Watch Island Retreat
70 A Higher Standard
31 Nestled in the Trees
78 Carriage-House Comeback
34 A Place to Read and Relax
84 A Pocket-Size House
37 Legacy on the Lake
That Lives Large
40 Do-It-Yourself Retreat
92 Timeless Character
43 Cranking Up the View
94 A Cottage Fit for a Hobbit
44 At Home in the Woods
46 The Crib
48 Chainsaw Tour de Forest

iv pa r t t i t l e
 part 4

part 3 part 4

98 Small Houses 159 Sheds, Studios, and

99 Small-House Secrets Other Small Structures
160 The Watershed: A Writing Studio
106 Big River, Small House
163 Baking Studio Alfresco
112 Passive House Perfection
166 A Tree House That’s for the Birds
120 A Small, Spacious House
for a Skinny City Lot 168 Teatime in Wisconsin
125 A Tiny Addition for a 170 Off the Grid, on the Shore
Growing Family
172 An Old-Time Garden Shed
130 A New Floor Plan Saves
175 Studio, Storage, and More
an Old House
176 Shinto Shed
138 A Better House, Not a Bigger One
177 The Benefits of a Smaller Scale
146 Build Like This
154 The Neighbor Out Back
182 Contributors
157 A Tiny Traditional Japanese House
184 Credits

186 Index
How Much Space
Do You Really Need? By Sarah Susanka

A
fter having written the series of Not-So-Big-
House books, I get a lot of questions from
people who want to know how much house
what to consider when
is enough. They want rules and standards to answer you’re remodeling
the question.
I respond to these inquiries with two general state-
■■ Identify the problem areas and rooms.
ments. First, making a house with a sense of home
■■ Take an inventory of the rooms you
has almost nothing to do with square footage. And already have, including dimensions
second, my ideas behind a Not-So-Big house usually and frequency of use.
mean building a house about a third smaller than you ■■ Look for spaces that can be connected
thought you needed but one that is just as expensive. to meet your needs.
■■ Look for spaces that can do double
Both of these comments are intended to take the
duty.
focus off quantity and place it firmly on the things ■■ Only after these steps, consider
that affect livability—the quality and character of the adding on.
spaces we inhabit. ■■ The scale of any added space should
match that of the existing house.

In your remodel
That all sounds well and good, but how do you imple-
ment those noble goals when you’re remodeling?
Where do you start, and how do you know whether
the amount of space you are living in or plan to live
in is too big or too small or just right? The guidelines
in the sidebar at right are intended to help determine
whether it’s more quantity of space you need or more
quality you’re really seeking.
Our typical solution these days is to favor quantity
over quality, when almost without exception it’s an
increase in quality of living environment that really
makes us feel better, more comfortable, and more
at home.
To orient and ground our discussion, let’s look at
a family with plans to remodel. An advantage they
had—particularly over a family considering building
an all-new house—is that they lived daily with their

2
home’s shortcomings, so they were painfully aware
of where its shape and size collided with the house-
hold’s needs.
Although they may not have been able to devise
the perfect solution, they could see the problems they
were facing with great clarity. Their challenge was to
avoid jumping to the simplest and most obvious solu-
tion, which very likely would have been too big and
might even have spoiled the character and utility of
the existing space.
On pp. 4–5 you’ll see the before and after floor
plans of the remodel of the Baer family’s house.
In your new house
If you are considering building a new house you might
imagine that the issues are similar; however, the
challenges related to figuring out how much space you
will need in a new home are significantly greater than
determining space needs when you are remodeling.
The reason for this is that the homeowners of the
house to be remodeled can tell you right away what
works and what doesn’t in their existing home, which
opens a seemingly easy discussion of how to make it
better with renovation.
For a couple thinking about a new home, the plans
for their potential building project that they look
at on paper typically don’t give them enough infor-
mation to gauge what the space will feel like when
construction is complete. Reading a set of plans is
one thing—it’s fairly easy to understand architects’
drawing conventions once they’re explained to
you—but lots of people have a hard time visualiz-
ing, for example, how big a 14-ft. by 16-ft. room will
feel. New-home builders can’t kick the tires until the
house is well on its way to completion, so there’s a lot
of guesswork involved.
Because there’s an almost universal fear of feeling
cramped—what I have termed “fear of too small-
ness”—would-be homeowners will tend to make ev-
erything a bit bigger than their favored plan suggests,
just to be on the safe side. This is one of the primary
reasons our culture’s new houses keep escalating
in size. It’s based on a fear of having the opposite
problem, with the result that many households find
themselves at sea in an ocean of space that is never
too small but also never too comfortable.
On pp. 6–7 we’ll look at the floor plan for the Win-
ston household’s existing house and the floor plan for
the new house they want to build.
what to consider when
you’re building new
■■ Measure and inventory the rooms you
live in now and identify dimensions
and frequency of use.
■■ As you look at plans to build, or as
you work with an architect, keep
the proportions of your existing home
in mind.
■■ Don’t build spaces you use less than a
handful of times a year.
■■ Identify rooms that can do double duty.
■■ Select a design whose proportions
match those of your favorite houses.
■■ Always get measurements of the
spaces you plan to build, including the
ceiling height of each, before commit-
ting to a design.
■■ If you think something might be too
big, try to find a model home with
similar proportions to visit to see how
it makes you feel.
■■ Find someone you can trust to help
you with the design and then listen to
what he or she advises.
h o w m u c h s pa c e d o yo u r e a l ly n e e d 3
 adding space but not
much square footage
John a nd cindy b aer live in a fine old
Victorian with their three young children. The
house is beautiful, but the space on the main
floor was poorly suited to their needs. They
spent most of their time while at home either
cooped up in the inhospitable kitchen or
sitting around the formal dining room table
1
inherited from Cindy’s mom, worrying all
the while about whether the children would 2
damage it.
3
They wanted a new kitchen, an informal
eating area, a place for the kids to play or
watch TV while Cindy was in the kitchen,
and an in-home office on the main level. The
remodeled floor plan involves very little
additional square footage, but it does give
4
the family lots more room.

The Problems
1 An awkward rear entry delivers people
directly into the kitchen.
5
2 The half-bath has only a toilet and a sink, so
there’s no reason for it to be as large as it is.
3 The circa 1975 kitchen is where most of the
family living occurs. 6

4 The dining room is isolated, making it diffi-

cult to use. The heirloom table isn’t appropri-
ate for family use.
5 The large entry hall is wasted space because
the family always uses the back door.
Before
6 The living room is rarely used because it is
too formal for everyday purposes.

4 h o w m u c h s pac e d o yo u r e a l ly n e e d
 The Solutions
1 A new informal eating area with a great
view of the backyard was added to the
kitchen.
2 Bigger kitchen windows provide a better con-
3
nection to the backyard.
3 The size of the screened porch was reduced
and a new back entry created.
1
4 The half-bath was reduced in size to make 2
room for a mudroom.
4
5 A 2-ft. bumpout provides room for a counter
without having to move the basement stairs,
which would have been expensive. There is
no window on this side because of the prox- 5
6
imity of the neighbors.
6 A section of the wall was removed to create
7
a connection between the kitchen and the 8
dining room.
7 A computer desk was added to the dining
room, making it a multipurpose room. Book-
shelves are on the opposite wall.
8 The heirloom table has a new protective
covering, so it can be used for homework and 14 10
9
bill paying, as well as for dining.
9 A small table and chairs in the living room
provides a spot for card games and jigsaw 12 11
puzzles.
10 Bookshelves on four walls make the room
feel more comfortable and less formal.
11 A flat-screen TV above the fireplace is a new
13
attraction to the living room.
After
12 The furniture is rearranged to make it more
user friendly.
13 An upholstered cushion on the window seat
creates a comfortable, cozy nook.
14 Because mail is delivered at the front of the
house, this is a perfect place for a mail-
sorting center.

h o w m u c h s pa c e d o yo u r e a l ly n e e d 5
 the winston family’s space
Doug a nd julie w inston and their
13-year-old daughter Laura have lived in a
rather drab 1950s two-story house for 12 years.
Although there’s easily enough space in it for
three, the kitchen has always been a problem,
with very little counter space and no place to
eat without retiring to the dining room. They
like to entertain, so a dining room that can be
used to serve two to four guests is important.
Their current dining room is OK, but a little on
the small size and without much to recommend
it aesthetically. The living room is large but not
used much because it’s not in the primary 1
circulation path through the house. Instead,
the den, which opens off the dining room, is
their primary living space. They like it because
2
its size is comfortable for the three of them to
gather and socialize. They’d like a new house
with more character, one that makes family
3 4
interaction easier during food prep but that
still allows them to engage in different
activities, such as homework, reading, and
listening to music, within a shared living space.
7

5
The Old House
1 The back of the house is the main entry point
for family members, and it’s ugly, cramped,
and unwelcoming.
6
2 The front entry is dark and cramped.
3 The kitchen is small and awkward, with lim-
ited counter space and no informal
eating area.
4 The pantry is one feature that works.
5 The formal dining room is completely sepa-
Old
rate from the kitchen. Most meals are eaten
in the den.
6 The den, where most of the living in the
house happens, is too far from the kitchen
for easy communication during food prep.
7 The formal living room is rarely used. It’s by
far the biggest room, but it’s not easily vis-
ible from the lived-in areas of the house.

6 h o w m u c h s pac e d o yo u r e a l ly n e e d
 The New House
1 The one living area is comfortable and
appropriate for both everyday living and 3
formal occasions.
5
4
2 A flat-screen TV is mounted above the
fireplace.
3 The office/away room can be separated 12
acoustically by closing the door, but it
remains connected visually to the living area 1 2
with an interior window.
4 The formal dining room does double duty as
library and homework area.
5 A library alcove offers a quiet, cozy place 7 10

to read. 8 6
6 The kitchen has plenty of counter space,
a walk-in pantry, and connection to
11
surrounding spaces. 9

7 The breakfast bar offers a place to socialize

during meal preparation.
8 The informal eating area has a lovely view
and a strong connection to the kitchen.
9 The small back deck connects with
the garden.
10 The pleasant and light-filled front entry
has an overlook from the kitchen half a level
above.
11 The family entry also opens to the welcoming New
front foyer.
12 Dotted lines indicate ceiling-height change.

h o w m u c h s pa c e d o yo u r e a l ly n e e d 7
8 pa r t t i t l e
 part 1

Cabins

a big little house on the ridge 10

raising the baby barn 16
did starting small work out? 21
watch island retreat 28
nestled in the trees 31
a place to read and relax 34
legacy on the lake 37
do-it-yourself retreat 40
cranking up the view 43
at home in the woods 44
the crib 46
chainsaw tour de forest 48

R a ising the ba by ba r n 9
A Big Little House
on the Ridge By Jonathan White

J ay and Sue Kimball had dreams of build-

ing a pair of houses on a ridge overlooking
the sheltered bay that occupies the heart of
Washington’s Orcas Island. One house would be the
primary residence, and the other a Craftsman-style
cabin for visitors. With architect in hand, they set
about designing the guest cabin first. But midway
into the building process an unexpected change in
Jay and Sue’s work life turned everything on end. As
a result, they moved to the island sooner than they
had anticipated, putting plans for the main house on
hold and making the cabin their primary residence.
As it turned out, the cabin became a lesson in
efficiency. It has no wasted space, offering lessons on
how any small house can make the most of the space
under, and in this case, next to its roof.

The roof is more than just a lid

Glimpsed from the path , the Kimball house is the
epitome of a shelter in the woods: a gable roof and a
chimney. Photo taken at A on floor plan.
To get the project off to the right start, architect Roy
Lundgren asked Jay and Sue to write a narrative
describing their vision of the guest cabin. In their
detailed and lively articulation, Sue described open,
light-filled spaces clad in wood and serving multiple
functions. She wanted room to dance and nooks to
nestle into with a good book. Jay felt strongly about
building the house with as little disturbance to the
land as possible.

10 cabins
 The first impression of the Kimball house is all Main level
roof. Visitors park about 50 steps away and descend A Sleeping area

on a winding footpath through mature trees and

D
mossy nurse logs. The roof’s long overhangs, thick-
Inglenook Office
butt cedar shingles, and stone chimney emulate the Up
textures of the forested hillside. The true complex-
F Ladder
ity of the roof, however, is revealed only moments Dn
Loft
above
Up
before you knock on the front door. “Let the bones Kitchen/
shower

show,” asked Jay, and indeed they do. Living dining

Dn
area area
Gazing upward, the eye is captured by a fabric B
of timber that forms the roof’s underbelly. Soaring
overhangs—8 ft. at the eaves and nearly 12 ft. at the
Entry
gable—are supported by hefty cantilevered rafters.
On top of these structures rests a lacework of purlins Specs
and cedar planking, each layer woven perpendicular Bedrooms: None really,
to the last, and each descending in size. Inspired by but sleeps 6
Bathrooms: 1
Japanese architecture, the result is a cabin with a Size: 800 sq. ft.
Cost: $431 per sq. ft. North
visual field of ever-changing light and depth. C
Completed: 2002
Location: Eagle Ridge,
“Long roof overhangs create a strong sense of shel- Orcas Island, Washington
Photos taken at
lettered positions.
ter,” Lundgren says, “which is really what a house is Architects: Street, Lundgren
& Foster
all about. They invite you in and enhance the feeling Builder: White Construction Co.; 0 2 4 8 ft.
David Klein, foreman
of protection.” In mild and rainy climates such as Storage/laundry
that of Orcas Island, large overhangs also extend the Lower
Bunks
living space and protect the house from weather. level

Below the front gable a triangular deck pokes out

Storage E
and over a precipitous west-facing slope. Thoughtful under
pruning gives the feeling of privacy and safety while sleeping Up
area
creating corridors of dazzling views.

The secrets to a function-

packed floor plan
Shower
The heart of Sue and Jay’s house is a 24-sq.-ft. space
with a cathedral ceiling that rises to 16 ft. in the No Wasted Space
center (see the photo on p. 12). Within this sym- In this floor plan, discrete spaces for specific functions
abound. Their boundaries are level changes, circulation paths,
metrical room are a number of discrete areas for a and even the placement of the beams that carry the rafters
home office, a living area, a dining space, a kitchen, near the ridge. Because the spaces are open to one another,
there is no sense of confinement in this house. Built-in cabinets
a master bedroom, and a carpeted inglenook in front divide the living area and kitchen from the sleeping area and
office, doing double duty as half-walls and storage.
of the fire (see the floor plan at right).
The main floor includes the kitchen, dining area,
and living room. Exposed rafters topped with
tongue-and-groove pine planking mirror the rustic
details of the exterior. The conventional ridge beam
is absent, leaving the interior peak sharp and unclut-

a big lit tle house on the r idge 11

A roof that shelter s inside and out. A 12-ft.-
deep overhang at the entry is composed of layers of
rafters and purlins inspired by Japanese architecture.
The roof overhang makes the deck an all-year outdoor
room. Photo taken at C on floor plan.
tered and allowing the massive fireplace chimney to
rise directly through the center of the building.
The gable at the entry is tall and made mostly
of glass, enabling the expansive views and un-
obstructed sunlight to chase away a sense of separa-
tion between inside and out. Double doors in the
center of this wall beckon toward the deck.
12 cabins
Five steps lead from the main floor to the loft. The
stairs are flanked at their base by a pair of Douglas-
fir columns, salvaged from the bottom of the
Columbia River. These rough, deeply checked logs
stand out in contrast to the adjacent refined surfaces
of vertical-grain fir and glass. A steel handrail,
fashioned by Steve Gropp of Salamander Forge,
spirals up these columns like the tendrils of a
climbing vine.
At the top of the stairs stands the centerpiece of
the house: a massive Rumford fireplace. By day a
ridge skylight spills natural light down its rusticated
A handr ail forged in fir e.
Sinewy, vinelike tendrils of hand-
tooled steel wrap around the rail-
ing to the upper level.

Complex on the inside.

Centered on the ridge, a skylight
pours raking light across the stone
chimney and hearth. Note how the
rafters cantilever over the beams
adjacent to the chimney, eliminat-
ing the need for a light-blocking
ridge beam. Photo taken at B on
floor plan.

face of edge-cliff stone; by night, dimmable pendants
provide a sharper focus of light and shadow. “Because
we have a lot of overcast days in the Northwest,”
Lundgren says, “our local light tends to be soft and
gray. I find that natural light from a skylight, far
more than a window, reveals the true form of the
interior space.”
Built-in seats on each side of the fireplace are car-
peted with black wool and serve at times for reading
or eating by a warm fire and at other times as steps
to the adjacent platforms. The one to the right of the
fireplace is used as an office and the other is just big
enough for Jay and Sue’s sleeping futon. Below the
futon platform is a storage room, which is accessed
by a secret door in the living-room bookshelf.
The kitchen takes up a scant 8 ft. of wall space,
but within these confines Sue got what she needed.
The cabinets are grain-matched clear fir, the floors
are Spanish cherry, and the countertops are black
®
Corian with an undermount stainless-steel sink. A
mirror backsplash gives the illusion of windows that
are located under the upper cabinets.
To maximize counter space, Jay and Sue installed
®
Sub-Zero refrigerator drawers and a two-burner

a big lit tle house on the r idge 13

 cooktop. Without the flexibility of a typical four-
burner stove, they have adapted to a more efficient
approach to cooking, which works fine for the two
of them. For dinner parties, though, they expand
operations to the gas grill and the big worktable on
the deck under the eaves. For baking they rely on the
®
multitasking GE Advantium wall-mounted oven
(see the sidebar at left).

Upper-lev el bedroom and office. Carpeted

benches on each side of the inglenook lead to the
cooking with the bed alcove on one side and to the office on the other.
ge advantium 120 Built-in cabinets throughout the house maximize stor-
age while minimizing the need for space-consuming
furniture. A small sofa, two end tables, and a narrow
Our kitchen h a s limited space, so we dining table are the only freestanding furniture in the
building. Photo taken at D on floor plan.
installed an electric oven: the GE Advantium 120.
At 151⁄2 in. deep by 30 in. wide by 161⁄2 in. high,
it fits comfortably into the upper cabinets. The
Advantium plugs into a standard 120v outlet and
includes an exhaust vent that clears the air for both
the cooktop and the oven. But we didn’t appreciate
the Advantium’s most important attributes until we
actually used it.
The Advantium has three cooking modes:
convection, microwave, and Speedcook. In Speed-
cook mode, the oven heats with the speed of a
microwave and broils and browns like a conven-
tional oven.
The Advantium uses interchangeable turn-
tables—one glass, one metal—depending on cook-
ing mode. To use our 131⁄2 -in. by 21-in. casserole,
we remove the turntable, set the oven on convec-
tion mode, and simply rotate the casserole half-
way through cooking. We’ve used the Speedcook
feature and can verify that it will bake a potato with
crispy skin in 12 minutes. But truth be known, we
mostly use the oven in the convection mode. It is a
compact workhorse. We routinely prepare meals for
six or more people.
—Sue and Jay Kimball

14 cabins
A mostly indoor k itchen. At 8 ft.
long, the kitchen packs a lot of function
into a small space. Two under-counter
refrigerator drawers are on the left
side. A two-burner cooktop and an
Advantium oven in the upper cabinets
anchor the right side. When more
firepower is required, the gas grill on
the deck is pressed into service. Photo
taken at F on floor plan.

A bathroom of m an y parts.
Reached by way of a ladder, a sunny
loft over the shower is illuminated by
its own skylight. Photo taken at E on
floor plan.

Bunk beds and the bath round
out the lower level
Stairs that are off the kitchen lead five steps down to
the tiled floor of the bathroom, which is adjacent to
and below the spaces for guests.
A loft above the shower is a favorite sleeping nook
for visiting nieces and nephews. On the lower level,
a second pair of bunk beds accommodates more
guests. Behind the bunk room, the walk-in closet
includes a stacked washer and dryer.
After two years in the house, Jay and Sue have
few complaints. “I miss a bathtub,” says Sue, “and
privacy with overnight guests can be a challenge.
But I’ve come to value the small size, aesthetically,
practically, and environmentally. The house brings
together a sense of calm—like what I feel in a small
chapel—and a tree-house-like playfulness that
comes from our location in the woods. There’s a
wonderful sense of discovery here.”

a big lit tle house on the r idge 15

Raising the
Baby Barn
I
n the late 1980s I bought 10 acres of hillside in
southern Vermont and moved a big antique barn
onto the property for a vacation house. I left most
of the site wooded but cleared 3 acres, creating a
meadow with nice views to the east.
By 1995 I got the urge to build again. This time I
wanted to build a small guesthouse that would echo
the main house. I had the perfect place for what I
call the “Baby Barn,” nestled against the tree line
overlooking the meadow and far enough from the
big barn for privacy.
To control costs, I wanted the Baby Barn to be
relatively simple. I planned to put the finishing
touches on it working mostly solo on weekends, with
occasional extended sessions. If the house was too
complex, I’d never get it done. On the other hand, I
wanted to create a variety of spaces, both intimate
and expansive, and to use reclaimed barn timbers
and siding to emulate the warmth and richness of an
old structure (www.conklinsbarnwood.com).
The sloped-site advantage
The Baby Barn is based on a traditional New Eng-
land bank barn, which is built into a slope and
typically has two floors. The upper floor opens to
the uphill side and vice versa. Placing the Baby
16 cabins
By Peter Kurt Woerner
Barn on a slope allowed me to save some money on
a foundation and to have daylight in the downhill
lower-level rooms.
The main floor has one big space for living and
dining, a kitchen, a bedroom, a loft over the bed-
room, and a bathroom (see the floor plan on p. 18).
There is no formal entry with a closet, just pegs
for coats.
The primary rectangle of the foundation is 18 ft.
by 40 ft. I chose 18 ft. so that I could use 2×12 floor
joists and not pay extra for I-joists (I don’t mind the
floor being a little bouncy). The living room feels
quite generous because of the 12-ft. walls and 10-ft.-
high windows.
On the lower level, the mechanicals and the laun-
dry are on the windowless uphill side of the barn.
Next to this area is a central stair and hallway with
a shared bath for the two bedrooms that open to the
meadow by way of French doors.
Hard work, smart choices
accelerate move-in day
My goal was to start in May and have the house
weathertight, insulated, heated, and livable (vacation
style) with one working bathroom by Thanksgiving.
I hired a full-time carpenter and two helpers for
 Simple building, gr eat var iet y. From the
intimate dining deck off the kitchen to the 20-ft.-
this big-push stage of the project, and I did all of the high living room, the Baby Barn packs a lot of
different spaces into a small house. Photo taken
ordering of materials and coordinating of subs even
at B on floor plan.
though I live three hours away.
I spent money strategically, investing in high-
quality finish items but also saving on components
that would be easy to change later. For example,
®
the windows are from Pella’s Architect Series, and
the roof is covered with western red-cedar shingles.
On the other hand, the first kitchen I put into the
Baby Barn was made of CDX plywood cabinets that
I built in a day and a cast-iron sink that I found in
a dumpster. This camp kitchen worked fine for the

r a ising the ba by ba r n 17
 the BaNK BarN reBorN
notched into a hillside and having entries on two levels, the Baby
Barn is a direct descendant of the venerable bank barn.

Ground floor

north Bedroom Mechanicals

Master
bedroom

Laundry a r amp Composed of fieldstone lea ds to the

m ain entry way. A barn door with a cutout for the
B bathroom window seals off the French doors between
visits. Photo taken at D on floor plan.
Kitchen

Main floor
Covered first three years, until I had the time and resources
porch
to put in a proper one.
Loft
To simplify the mechanical systems I chose a
above direct-vent, propane-fired hot-air furnace and hot-
Bedroom water supply. This saved me the time and money
Living Dining
area area
required to build a masonry flue for a conventional
tool
oil-fired boiler.
c
a
shed I would choose direct-vent gas appliances again,
but I would approach the electric service differ-
ently. Because I went with gas for heating, I decided
entry
I could save a little money by installing a 100-amp
service panel. It has worked fine so far, though if I
decide to add a garage I’ll likely have to upgrade the
electric service. In retrospect, I should have spent
d
the extra money for a 200-amp panel.
The plan worked. By Thanksgiving I had the Baby
Photos taken at Barn weathertight, plumbed, and rough-wired. With
lettered positions.
a three-burner camp stove, a tub with a poly shower
curtain, and some tag-sale furniture, voilà, the
specs house was livable.
0 5 10 20 ft.
Bedrooms: 3, plus
sleeping loft
Bathrooms: 2 Fireplaces as centerpieces
size: 1,700 sq. ft.
cost: $100 per sq. ft. I love fireplaces, so I put one in the master bedroom
completed: 2000
Location: South and another directly above it in the living room. The
Londonderry, Vermont raised stone hearth in the living room accommo-
designer/builder: Peter
Kurt Woerner, Faia dates firewood storage underneath. By stacking the

18 cabins
fireplaces, I needed only one chimney. I kept all the
firebox and chimney masonry inside the building
envelope for two reasons: one, so that I could work
on them in any type of weather; and two, to save
energy. Why build a fireplace outside the building
envelope when all the masonry will be exposed to
low temperatures (especially in Vermont, where it
can be as cold as 45°F below zero)?
I built the fireplaces myself out of concrete block.
Both are Count Rumford designs, which are great
for looks and for throwing off heat. I did, however,
have a mason take the chimney through the roof for
me. Then I spent a couple of years covering the block
with stone veneer.
To avoid a repeat of the barn-door fiasco, I care-
fully designed a cupola that could fit through the
double doors in the kitchen. I built the cupola in the
living room, minus its base, and finished it inside
and out with cedar shingles. I then got up on the
roof and used a chainsaw to chop a hole so that I
could build the cupola’s base in place.
On a nice late-spring day we had a cupola-raising
party. The local lumber company donated its crane
truck, we lifted up the cupola, and it dropped in
place perfectly.

Long-term projects have their

advantages
As you get to know a house over time, opportunities
present themselves that aren’t always obvious in the
big push to finalize a plan. As the Baby Barn grew
up, I got to customize it—in 1950s hot-rod par-
lance—with some bolt-on goodies. Three in particu-
lar stand out.

Barn Door
During framing I thought it would be neat to have a
sliding barn door to cover up the three French entry
doors, both for security and, for lack of a better
word, “barnishness.” So I built a 10-ft. by 10-ft. barn
door in the living room. It wasn’t until I had finished
the door that I realized it wouldn’t fit diagonally
through the French-door opening. A classic screw-
up. I got off light, though, because I hadn’t put up
the siding yet. I cut a slot in the plywood sheathing
and slid the door through it.
U nder a rustic sk in, high-per for m ance
insul ation. Recycled barn-board paneling and
Cupola
hand-hewn timbers set the tone. Polyisocyanurate
The building was looking a little too plain, even for foam insulation behind the paneling keeps the
a minimalist like me. A cupola is a classic detail on rooms comfy. At the top of the stairs, a sleeping
loft overlooks the living room. Photo taken at A
a bank barn, where it serves as a vent. I thought it on floor plan.
would be pretty cool to have one over the dining
room for day lighting; at night, it would shine like
a beacon.

R a ising the ba by ba r n 19
 A lof t y space w ith distant views. Banks of windows reach to nearly
12 ft. above the living-room floor. Wide spruce planks carry on the rustic feel
of the recycled barn-board paneling. Photo taken at C on floor plan.

Covered Porch
Originally there was an 8-ft. by 12-ft. notch in the
southeast corner of the house, next to the kitchen.
A year or two after the Baby Barn was up I started
thinking about how nice it would be to have a cov-
ered porch for dining alfresco. With just a corner
post, a bit of roof, and some decking there would be
room for a little table.
Working with a top-notch framer, we completed
the porch in three days and feathered some new
cedar shingles into the old roof. I also added a
quirky little dormer, which brings light to both the
porch and the sleeping loft.
Obviously, building a house this way is not for
everyone. A vacation house can be doable, and if
you’re young you might be able to take a similar ap-
proach to building a permanent residence. Stress on
a relationship can be severe, though, so it’s critical
to have a few construction-free zones, especially a
clean bathroom and a tidy place to sleep. The sweat-
equity savings are significant, but the key to it all is
to remember that life is in the living.

20 cabins
 Did Starting Small
By RoBeRt KniGht Work Out?

I
n the late 1990s my firm designed two projects
that tackled the problem of how to start using your
land when you’re not ready to spend the money
for your dream house. This story is about how one
of them, a little Greek-revival farmhouse that was
phase 1 of a larger home, worked out.
When they bought their land, Chris and Bette
startING poINt, West eLevatIoN
Noble were committed to living part of the year in
the original plan was to build the Greek-revival farmhouse shown
Maine, with an eye toward eventually living there above, but to do it in two stages beginning with the one-story
portion.
full-time.
Initially we designed a Greek-revival farmhouse
that pleased all of us (see the drawing at right).
By our calculations, however, it was going to cost
around $350,000. Although that figure would be
affordable for the Nobles at some point, it wasn’t in
the cards in the late 1990s, so we decided to build
the house in two phases. Phase 1 (see the photo at
right and drawing on p. 25) consisted of a main
room with a kitchen and space for sitting and a din-
ing table. A ladder in this room led to a loft over the
screened porch.
The bedroom/bath, known as the “dependency,”
sat on piers and was bolted to the south end of the

phase 1 (1998 ) Bedrooms: 1;

Bathrooms: 1; Size: 714 sq. ft.;
Cost: $112 per sq. ft.

21
 Phase 2 ( 2006 ) Bedrooms: 2; Bathrooms: 2; Size: 1,248 sq. ft.; Cost: $232 per sq. ft.

Phase 3 ( 2010 ) Home office; Size: 216 sq. ft.; Cost: $273 per sq. ft.; Total: 2,178 sq. ft.

22 cabins
 Phase 1

Comf y camp for eight

y ear s. The main room
had a temporary kitchen
and dining corner during
phase 1 (above). People
were so fond of this
space and its unfinished
quality that there was
resistance to finishing the
house. Photos taken at
A on floor plan.

Phase 2

main room. The plan was to unbolt the dependency
during phase 2, move it into the woods, and expand
it to become a guest cottage. Then we would convert
the main room into a dedicated living room with
a fireplace and fill in the rest of the three-bedroom
house as planned.
It didn’t work out that way.
Instead, the house went through the same kind
of evolution that Maine farmhouses in the 19th
century underwent. The family’s needs changed,
and indeed even the family changed (see the sidebar
on pp. 24–25).
Eight years on
The idea of getting on the land really worked. For
eight years the house was used on weekends and for
longer summer stays. When it came time to go to
phase 2, though, the new Nobles decided they didn’t
need three bedrooms and didn’t want a guesthouse.
We moved the dependency around to the east and
added enough space to it to make a downstairs
bedroom and office accessible by wheelchair (see
the floor plans on p. 25). The house got shorter and
turned a corner, and the living room was dressed up
and fitted with a fireplace.

d i d s t a r t i n g s m a l l wo r k o u t ? 23
changes happen

in the e a r ly 199 0s I visited the Nobles on the startING poINt

their newly purchased land and photographed Conceived as a three-bedroom house, the initial
their tent. Bette Noble, Chris’s wife and my plan was prioritized into two phases to make the
friend, died in 2002, and a year later I returned project more affordable.
to visit the warm, rustic phase 1 house.
Love brought the major changes to our
lives and the house. In 2004 Chris and I began
redesigning phase 2 with Knight Associates,
my introduction to working with architects
and contractors. I had no idea there was so
much to say about so many details! Turning the
corner with the new ell would provide a private
first-floor bedroom and bathroom, an intimate
outdoor space, and new views of the Bagaduce
Ground floor
River. I had bonded with the dependency, so
instead of setting it aside as a future guest Woodstove
house, we decided to incorporate it into the Kitchen
house as my home office.
Bob Knight had warned us about expecting Dn Bedroom
Living room
a guest room to serve as a home office, and it
wasn’t long before I began to dream of having
entry
an area where I could continue working even
when guests arrived. We sat down with the Screened porch
architects and designed a bright studio/project
room with a high ceiling that links us to the
woods and the nearby stream. One exterior north Storage
door opens to the back porch, and an interior
door goes into the guest room, eliminating the
0 2 4 8 ft.
need for an additional bathroom. When guests Bedroom Dn Bedroom
are here we leave the studio via the back-porch
door and enter the door to the main house,
preserving our guests’ privacy. The resulting
addition looks as if it has always been here. second floor

—Christine Farrow-Noble,
freelance writer and photographer

24 cabins
phase 1 phase 2
Phase 1 consisted of the living room/screened Phase 2 deviated from the original plan. The depen-
porch portion of the house, plus the “dependency”: dency turned the corner, becoming a home office/
a removable bedroom on piers. guest bedroom.

Bedroom
Deck
Kitchen
Bedroom

Main
Ground floor
room a entry

Screened porch
Kitchen

Living Dining Up
room area
Covered
a entry porch
phase 3
Screened porch
Phase 3 added a dedicated office/studio, a
concession to the fact that an office/guest
bedroom just doesn’t work once guests Bedroom
arrive. Larry Packwood Builders constructed
Dn
all three phases.

office/
Studio

second floor
Bedroom
Deck
B

Screened porch

c
Living Up
room Dining
Covered
d area
entry porch

d i d s t a R t i n g s m a l l wo R k o u t ? 25
 1998 2006
phase 3 Complete. The new room at the
far left of the house, a dedicated office
and project studio, supplied the missing
piece of the puzzle. The gable roof makes
a proper conclusion to this one-story wing.
Photo taken at B on floor plan.
The drawing above left shows the original version
looking back from the water; the middle drawing
shows what we ended up with at the end of phase 2
in 2006. Would I have done it exactly this way if we
had built it all at once? Probably not, because this
design is a bit more complex than it needs to be to
accomplish the program. However, it created better
exterior spaces and gave the house a stronger eleva-
tion from up the hill on the approach. It has more
of that feel of an evolved farmhouse—and that’s
26 cabins
2010
because it did evolve—and I don’t think it looks like
a house and an addition.
But wait—there’s more
As the house became more “home” for the Nobles
and as their place in the city started to recede into
the status of the “other place” they discovered that
they needed to have more space. Not bedrooms—
they were right about that—but they had under-
estimated the space and privacy they would need for
work when they were here more of the time.
For some reason many clients seem loath to admit
their need for a real home office, and they say to me,
“My office can double as the second guest bedroom.”
Really? Having houseguests is not made more pleas-
ant by having your ability to do your work canceled
by their presence. Because the Nobles needed a
dedicated workspace for writing and other projects,
we added another piece on the “ell” (see the floor
plans on p. 25). The trick was to use this extension to
give the ell an endpoint—and that mostly would be
accomplished by how the roof was treated.
After first trying a simple extension of the hip
(boring) and then removing the hip and putting a
gable on the end (looked like a double-wide had run
into the building), I realized that this new piece,
rather than being hidden, needed to make its own
statement. So we turned its roof perpendicular to
the existing ridge of the ell and created a miniature
Greek temple to end the building (see the photo
above and drawing above right).
Of course, we’ll be in trouble if we need to extend
this house again, but I probably can let my successor
worry about that.
 It looks lik e it’s always
been this way. Phase 1 and
phase 2 come together at the
columned wall between the liv-
ing room and the kitchen/dining
area (below). For the first eight
years the kitchen occupied the
space now given over to the
fireplace and its hearth (left).
Photos taken at C and D on
floor plan.

d i d s t a r t i n g s m a l l wo r k o u t ? 27
Watch Island
Retreat

I
f the best getaways are the least accessible, then
Bruce Danning’s Watch Island in New York’s
Oseetah Lake certainly qualifies. It’s a 10-minute
boat ride in the summer, unless the water is too low.
And in winter, when the ice is thick, Danning has to
ski, snowmobile, or when all else fails, walk across
the lake.
But Danning never thinks twice about making the
trip. He purchased the island in 1985, unaware that
it was too small to qualify as “buildable property.”
After waiting two years for the necessary permits,
Danning spent the next five building the camp.
With its twig-work trim and rough-hewn siding,
the main cabin looks like a simple, rustic dwelling.
The inside, though, feels more like a tiny yacht club.
Seven-ft.-tall mahogany windows line the walls,
and the ceiling is coffered with mirrored panels.
The hand-cut sandstone of the cabin’s fireplace was
dragged by sled over the frozen wintertime lake to
0 9 18 36 ft.
the island. Danning brought over the seven species
of wood used in the cabin’s construction, materials
he had saved from his millwork shop. covers the lawn, or to the muskrats and beavers that
Solar panels and a wind generator answer the undermine the buildings and create cave-ins. Still,
island’s electricity needs, but Danning still hasn’t neither rodents nor floods keep Danning from mak-
found a solution to the high water that sometimes ing the trek to his remote island retreat.

28 cabins
wa t c h i s l a n d r e t r e a t 29
 Bruce Danning wanted living
on the tin y isl and to feel like
“staying on a yacht.” He also was
inspired by the great camps of the
Adirondacks. The result is a rustic
exterior with twig-work gables and
trim and an ornate interior with
fine wood details, including nine
3-ft. by 7-ft. mahogany windows
originally intended for a Manhattan
brownstone.

On an isl and only as

big as a l arge house
(4 , 4 0 0 sq. ft. ) , Bruce
Danning has managed to
fit five buildings: the main
cabin, a bunkhouse that
sleeps four, his sleeping
cabin, a “comfort station”
with a shower, and a privy.

30 cabins
 Nestled
in the Trees

I t was around the time of the Civil War that Geof-

frey Prentiss’s great-grandfather homesteaded
several hundred acres on Washington State’s
San Juan Island. One hundred twenty years later,
Prentiss, an architect, designed a post-and-beam,
cedar-sided cabin on the land for himself and his
two brothers. A long porch flanks two sides of the
house and looks down to the Pacific Ocean several
hundred yards away—close enough to see the waves
and hear seals barking and playing on the rocky
shore. Seattle-based Prentiss stays at the cabin about
eight nights every month. “I have an old oak table
that used to be my grandmother’s,” he says. “I move
it out to the porch and sit with my back to the fire A woodstove provides most of the heat, but there
and work on my computer.” are back-up electric baseboards to take off the chill
Perched on a hill overlooking the Pacific, the until the stove starts cooking. “By the end of the
cabin is filled with windows—360 square panes of first day,” says Prentiss, “the radiant heat from the
glass in total—and pairs of French doors that fill the fireplace and the woodstove are enough to keep
rooms with soft light from the surrounding forest. A me warm.”
large open first-floor room terminates at one end in Below the main room, the lower level was origi-
the kitchen and at the other with a fireplace (which nally designed as a large bunkroom and small bath
is backed by an outdoor hearth on the adjacent for kids, but, Prentiss says, “It’s just now being
porch). Sleeping lofts and balconies at each end of redone to have a nicer bath, a studio area, and a
the building are reached by steep stairs. bedroom.”

31
32 cabins
 Cabin

Ocean

Geoffr ey Pr entiss’s 16-ft. by

60 -ft. cedar-sided cabin, nestled
in the trees a few hundred yards from
the shore, is sited so that it can take
advantage of the sun’s rays. Inside
(right) is one large room with sleeping
lofts at both ends.

The concr ete fir epl ace is the

heart of the cabin. After it cured,
it was sanded to a satin-smooth finish.
The fireplace and a woodstove provide
most of the cabin’s heat.

nestled in the trees 33

A Place to Read
and Relax
A rchitect Mark Simon is also a sculp-
tor and a woodworker. His commission
to design a small retreat set in a grassy
marshland gave him the opportunity to work with
craftsmen skilled in the traditions of Adirondack
furniture making and log-cabin building.
Though it evokes the romantic Adirondack style,
this playful cabin was conceived with art in mind.
Sculptural qualities are evident in the asymmetrical
arrangement of logs that frame the front and back
porches, as well as in the copper and tree-trunk
fireplace, which creates a favored place to sit with a
good book. Wide tree-trunk steps welcome visitors
to the cabin, and inside, the room is filled with light
34 cabins
By Anne Corey
from a wall of glass that makes this tiny house feel
larger. Log beams above the main room give the
interior perimeter an octagonal shape. “The octagon
centers you,” says Simon. Along with the wall of
French doors, “It gives you the feeling of being at the
edge of the wild, looking out in every direction.”
To avoid damage to the ecologically sensitive
marsh, much of the tiny cabin was built off-site.
After driving piles into the marsh, carpenters
secured a platform to the wood posts 4 ft. above the
ground. The cabin was then brought to the site and
®
assembled like Lincoln Logs . Finishing touches—
such as the copper-clad fireplace and three sets of
French doors—were added at the site.
The cabin’s notched -log walls w ill
shr ink as they continue to dry, a process
that will take about ten years. Bolts at the
top and bottom of the cabin must be tight-
ened every year as the logs cure.
a big lit tle house on the r idge 35
 The focal point in
the m ain room is the
copper-clad fireplace,
which grows in character
as the metal ages to a
rich patina. The mantel is
an apple-tree trunk from
an orchard in upstate
New York.

Porches on both
ends of the cabin
have deep, sheltering
eaves and provide lots of
outdoor space for enjoy-
ing water views and a
variety of marsh wildlife.

Fireplace Bath

Toward
water

Series of French doors

Scale in feet
1 6 ft.
0 3

36 cabins
 Legacy
By Maria LaPiana on the Lake

T his tiny cabin sits deep in the woods of

Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Ameri-
can Legion State Forest, 220,000 pristine
acres refreshed by more than 900 lakes close to the
Michigan border. It’s surrounded by trees, wildlife,
and little else. Jerry Gunnelson built the cabin as a
gift to himself, to his wife, Janet, to their children
and grandchildren, and to the land itself, which he
describes as “always giving and never taking.”
The “council ring,” a circle of stones surrounding
a fire pit and a quartet of Adirondack chairs (see the
photo on p. 38), invites family gatherings, campfires,
and late-night conversations. Spending time at the
cabin gives him peace of mind, Gunnelson says, and
a sense of gratitude. “If there’s one thing that gives
me satisfaction,” he says, “it’s that there is a story
here that I can pass on to my kids and grandkids.”
The unassuming 400-sq.-ft. cabin is situated on a
1,100-acre chain of three fish-filled lakes. There’s a
single sitting room and kitchen and a sleeping loft.
The windows are hinged at the top, so they can be
secured when open all the way to make the cabin
feel like a screened porch.
Gunnelson hired an architect to design the cabin,
but he built it himself with a friend who is a car-
Tuck ed in the woods,
the cabin is windowed
on three sides. Patio doors
open to let in summer
breezes and create an
expansive view of the lake.
penter. They used recycled and reclaimed materials,
including more than a hundred 24-ft. timbers of
Douglas fir from an elementary school that had been
torn down.
Because he wanted to connect the building to his
roots, he brought in two oak trees from his family’s
farm to support the cantilevered part of the cabin.
He also used stone from his father’s and grandfa-
ther’s farms, and even brought some back from the
family’s original homestead in Norway. That stone
sits in the council ring.
“I knew that anything I built would detract
from what nature has done, so I kept it simple,”
Gunnelson says.

37
38 cabins
Nothing is visible
from the end of the pier
except the lake and
untouched state land.

the cantilev er ed front

of the cabin (above) rests on
two oak trees felled from the
owner’s family farm.

The beds ar e all built in,

and the windows open upward to
create a screened-porch effect.

l e g ac y on t h e l a k e 39
Do-It-Yourself
Retreat
M ichael and Peg, the owners of this simple
dwelling, relish the peaceful views and
clear weather that accompany living on
the leeward side of the Olympic Mountains. They
chose a rural setting between the mountains and
Puget Sound and built a barnlike weekend cabin.
Exposed beams, windows made from salvaged and
new materials, and vintage garage doors refitted
to resemble great barn sliders reflect the area’s rich
agricultural history.
Although they and their kids enjoy the place on
summer weekends, the couple looks forward to
adapting it for year-round use in retirement. “We
40 cabins
By Samara Rafert
have very good weather here in the winter,” Michael
says. “It’s the best-kept secret.” From the deck,
they’ll continue to enjoy views of boats in the sound,
mountains changing color with the light, marsh
hawks hunting in the corn fields, and thousands of
stars at night.
It took a summer-long search for Michael and
Peg to find their ideal piece of land, and then they
ordered the makings of their 24-ft. by 32-ft. retreat
from New Hampshire’s Shelter-Kit, which sells easily
customized kits for post-and-beam houses. Michael
and some friends erected the basic structure in three
weeks. To keep the interior spacious and airy, the
homeowners extended the sleeping loft only partway
across, creating a “great room” feel. Over the years
the cabin, which sleeps 10 and frequently accommo-
dates guests, has been modified to feel more perma-
nent, although always clean and simple.
Go w ith the flow. French doors
let indoors and outdoors flow together,
while exposed beams maintain the
barnlike feel.
a big lit tle house on the r idge 41
 It’s all about the
view. The homeowners,
Michael and Peg, cite
the deck as their favorite
aspect of the cabin. As
Michael says, “Taking in
the views and sipping a
beer in the Adirondack
chair is it.”

Loft above

Living
area
Bedroom

K eep it simple. The owners emphasized

Deck
simple decor throughout the small space,
but bright colors and retro furnishings keep
the interior lively.

Scale in feet North

0 3 6 12 ft.

42 cabins
 Cranking Up
By Chris Ermides the View

O verlooking a lake in northern Idaho,

this contemporary cabin makes inspir-
ing use of humble materials. Although
carpenters by trade, the crew of M/C Company from
Spokane, Washington, embraced the opportunity
to work with concrete and steel. The cabin’s most
impressive feature—a 6-ton, 30-ft. by 20-ft. window
that opens at the turn of a wheel—was built on-site
and glazed in place. Philip Turner designed and
built the window’s gear-drive mechanism, which can
be operated by even a young child. The cabin was
designed by Tom Kundig, FAIA, of Olson Sundberg
Kundig Allen Architects.

Blur r ing the line bet w een indoor s and

out. When the large window is up the entire
living space is open to the lake and the surround-
ing forest.

43
At Home
in the Woods By chris ermides

T
hough the word cabin implies rustic living,
Jim Olson, a principal at Olson Sundberg
Kundig Allen Architects in Seattle, proves
with his version that you don’t have to rough it to
enjoy nature. Beginning with a 14-ft. by 14-ft. bunk-
house he built himself in 1959, Olson completed
a series of three small additions and renovations
over the course of 40 years. By leaving much of the
structure exposed and by using subdued colors, he
preserved the spare, reflective nature of a cabin.
Punctuated by locally milled Douglas-fir uprights,
floor-to-ceiling windows frame views of Puget
Sound and Mount Rainier. A pod-like bedroom
addition cleverly integrates a circular skylight well
with the bed’s headboard and flanking bookshelves.
The simply stated cabin sits amid the lush landscape
in a way that any architect or builder can appreciate.
Even Thoreau would feel right at home.

Bet ter than camping. Between

the skylight above and the windows
on either side, sleeping in the bed
is almost like sleeping in the woods,
but far more comfortable.

44 cabins
Simple living. Wooden boxes that hold books and
games serve as coffee tables, and the chairs would be
just as comfortable outdoors as they are in.

a t h o m e i n t h e wo o d s 45
The Crib
D
rawing inspiration from traditional farm
buildings used to store corn, The Crib is ar-
chitect Jeffery Broadhurst’s award-winning
small shelter designed to serve as a weekend cabin,
a backyard office, a studio, or a guest house. The
prototype (shown here) is installed at the sculpture
garden at the Strathmore Arts Center in Bethesda,
Maryland, and was fabricated and assembled by
Enviresponsible Shelters, Rockville, Maryland, and
Added Dimensions, Takoma Park, Maryland.
Broadhurst combined the concept of traditional
wood timber framing with the structural simplicity
of scaffolding systems to design the shop-fabricated
galvanized-steel bent structure. Structural insulated
panels (SIPs) supported by engineered wood and
46 cabins
By Maureen Friedman
A soft glow. With its trans-
lucent walls, The Crib is full of
daylight without the need for
windows and at night it glows
from within.
steel beams that span between the bends form the
floor and roof. Prefabricated wall panels of unpainted,
heat-treated poplar and translucent insulating multi-
layer polycarbonate sheets are weatherstripped and
clipped into the framework.
The Crib can be outfitted with a kitchen or an
office, and a bathroom can be added either at the
foundation level or on the main level in the larger
Extended Crib model. An insulated-glass garage
door opens to a deck. The Crib is factory-built using
sustainable, recyclable materials, then is quickly
assembled on site. To date, fabrication has been
local, but Broadhurst is interested in establishing a
partnership with a house fabricator/distributor with
a national or international presence.
Pack ing it in. The expand-
able office and sleeping loft
above fit a lot of function into
a tiny space. A small propane-
fired stainless steel fireplace
and a radiant floor system
heat the structure.

the crib 47
Chainsaw
Tour de Forest By Chris Ermides

I
n the Pacific Northwest, chainsaws aren’t just for
felling trees and cutting firewood. They’ve become
one of the tools most often grabbed by artists and
craftsmen to create wooden sculptures. A guest
cabin in a verdant British Columbia forest designed
by Henry Yorke Mann unites this new tradition
with Native American totem-pole traditions that are
many centuries old. The project gave craftsmen at
Surefit Log Homes in Chilliwack, B.C., the oppor-
tunity to display their chainsaw skills. Chainsaws
were the only tools used to cut the dovetail corners
on the sidewalls and to carve the arm-like supports
on the totems that hold up the roof. Once cut, the
supports were mortised (with a chainsaw, of course)
to the white-cedar posts and secured with threaded
rod. Showing off a patina of green-tinted tarnish,
custom-fabricated flashing caps the ridge and pro-
tects projecting beam ends.

Heav y-dut y joinery. The exterior walls

of this 400-sq.-ft. log cabin constructed
by Surefit Log Homes and Trans Northern
Construction are 12×12 cedar timbers that
were dovetail jointed at the corners.

48 cabins
 part 2

Cottages

a garden cottage for 50

low-impact living
the second time around 58
small cottage makes a big splash 63
a higher standard 70
carriage-house comeback 78
a pocket-size house 84
that lives large
timeless character 92
a cottage fit for a hobbit 94

a big lit tle house on the r idge 49

A Garden Cottage
for Low-Impact
Living By Nir Pearlson

Greenway

W
hen I first met my clients, Julie, a veteran
elementary-school teacher, and Rob, a
county commissioner, they had been
living in a 600-sq.-ft. remodeled chicken coop on a
Barn
2.1-acre property for 28 years. Committed to a low-
impact and highly self-sufficient lifestyle, they were
on a quest to replace the chicken coop with a simple
and sustainable home. Their house would need to be
durable, low maintenance, and energy efficient, and
Shed
it would need to complement their sprawling garden.
Most of all, they hoped, their home would inspire
them with beauty every day.
Julie and Rob’s vision echoed my firm’s mission
to design sustainable small-scale homes and to Gazebo
promote urban infill. In addition, I immediately fell
in love with their garden, an oasis of tranquility and Gardens
sustenance minutes from Eugene’s downtown. My
Garden
firm’s challenge was to design a compact house that cottage
would support a modest lifestyle yet foster a sense of
abundance.
Carport
Shared
driveway
Backyard Home
in a Private Setting Primary
house
This long, narrow 2.1-acre lot hosts both a main house
and the garden cottage featured here. Situated
between a main thoroughfare and a greenway, the
location bridges urban and natural settings.

50 c o t t ag e s

A verdant site near
an urban core
Julie and Rob’s lot is a remnant of the farmland that
surrounded Eugene in its early days, most of which
has since been subdivided into small residential
lots. Oriented east-west, the 700-ft.-long lot pro-
vides a generous solar exposure that combines with
rich floodplain soil to make this property ideal for
gardening. During the summer the vegetable garden
provides most of Julie and Rob’s food, as well as a
surplus that they store for the winter. The lot extends
between a major traffic arterial on the west and a
bike path along the Willamette River to the east.
Immediate access to transportation, city amenities,
and the river’s ecosystem translates into urban living
at its very best.
Shelter amid plent y. Decks and porches link the house
to the extensive gardens surrounding it, while generous roof
overhangs provide shelter from sun and rain.
In addition to its vegetable and ornamental
gardens, the property hosted a weathered barn, a
storage shed, Julie and Rob’s chicken coop, and a
bungalow from the 1920s that faces the street and
is leased by long-term tenants. With no desire for
large interiors, Julie and Rob had chosen to live in
the smaller accessory house, and they wanted their
new home to occupy the same location among the
vegetable beds and fruit trees. Because they spend
much of their time tending the land, maintaining
visual and physical access to the outdoors was a top
priority, so the design of the new house centered on
the garden.
a g a r d e n c o t t ag e f o r l o w- i m pa c t l i v i n g 51
 Pow er and light. In addition to shelter,
the roofs provide a platform for solar panels
and a venue for clerestories. Julie and Rob wanted more space than they had
in the old coop, but they were content to limit the
area and height of their new home to comply with
local regulations for secondary dwelling units.
To accommodate future growth through greater
housing density, Eugene’s zoning code allows
construction of accessory dwellings alongside exist-
ing homes on single-home residential properties.
Although the zoning code limits the interior of an

52 c o t t ag e s

accessory dwelling to 800 sq. ft. of living space, it
allows this living space to be augmented with cov-
ered outdoor areas and storage or utility rooms with
exterior access.
We took advantage of this allowance to add a
mechanical room and multiple covered porches, and
because areas with low headroom are not legally
considered habitable rooms, we included a bonus
space. This area, accessed by a ladder, includes a
concealed mechanical-equipment attic and an open,
daylit meditation loft.
Designed for the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is known for its long, rainy
winters, prompting a “shed the water and bring in
the light” strategy. Summers can be hot, however, so
solar protection is necessary. Generous overhangs
on the house’s low-sloped shed roofs address all
these issues. The south-sloping roof extends the full
width of the house and shelters the great-room win-
dows from winter storms and summer heat. It also
points two solar arrays toward the sun and allows
for north-facing clerestories to illuminate the guest
room and loft. The north-facing roof opens the main
bedroom to garden views and to mini-clerestories.
A small roof on the west shelters the entry. To the
south, a roof over the patio springs up and away
from the house to frame expansive views and to
allow low-angle winter sun to penetrate the indoors.
The windows, clerestories, skylights, and three
exterior glazed doors provide an ongoing connec-
tion with the outdoors and bring in ample daylight.
Julie and Rob wanted their home to represent the
Pacific Northwest aesthetically as well. Combin-
ing modern forms with traditional craftsmanship,
this hybrid timber-frame house includes exposed,
load-bearing heavy-timber construction as well as
standard joists and studs. Posts, beams, rafters, and
roof decking were milled from regional Douglas fir
or hemlock timber. The woodwork is clear-coated,
which highlights the mineral-tinted Imperial Plaster
wall finish (www.usg.com).
Sightlines and views make a
small house feel spacious
Julie and Rob wanted their home to be at what they
called a “human scale.” Julie defines that as “not so
big as to feel dwarfed and diminished, but not so
small as to feel confined and limited.” With Julie and
Rob’s human scale in mind, we designed the roof—
with its rafters exposed—to define the scale, orienta-
a g a r d e n c o t t ag e f o r l o w- i m pa c t l i v i n g 53

durable details
Long-l a sting ex ter ior f inishe s are a
big part of sustainable building, and the Pacific
Northwest’s damp climate can be unforgiving to
poorly detailed exteriors. Low-maintenance fin-
ishes include copper-penny metal roofing, fascia
cladding, gutters, and downspouts. The steel
columns are painted to complement the roof.
Most of the building is clad with fiber cement
lap siding. This durable, low-maintenance mate-
rial is simple to install, and it provides a familiar,
homey look. Wall areas that are protected by
eaves or by patio roofs feature stained plywood.
Similarly, the Douglas fir exterior doors are pro-
tected by overhanging roofs. The windows are
wood with aluminum cladding.
54 c o t t ag e s
tion, and character of each interior space. With no
option for vast rooms, we mixed and overlapped the
entry, living, dining, kitchen, and circulation spaces
into a great room. Long vistas through spaces, win-
dows, and doors foster a sense of expansion, while
coves such as a window seat off the great room allow
for repose.
To prevent monotony, spaces are delineated by
changes in flooring or with cabinets or built-ins. For
example, the slate flooring transitions from the entry
into a simple hearth, where a woodstove visually
anchors the great room.
Third-party certification
confirms the home’s quality
construction
Julie and Rob’s commitment to sustainable living
allowed us to select strategies to reduce their carbon
footprint significantly. This earned their home an
Earth Advantage Platinum Certification, the highest
level offered by Earth Advantage New Homes, an
Oregon-based third-party certification program.
Earth Advantage weighs energy efficiency, indoor-
air quality, resource efficiency, environmental
responsibility, and water conservation.
The roof and walls were sheathed with a continu-
ous layer of rigid foam, 1 in. on the walls and 2 in.
on the roof. This foam prevents thermal bridging
and insulates well beyond code levels. Daylight
from the windows minimizes the need for electric
lighting, and a minisplit heat pump couples with
a heat-recovery ventilator to heat and ventilate the
home efficiently. A woodstove provides backup heat
and ambience.
A grid-tied solar photovoltaic array offsets
summertime electricity use; domestic hot water
is provided by a solar hot-water collector. In the
future, a gray-water diversion system and rainwater
catchment cisterns will supply irrigation water to
the gardens.
 Daylight, not cabinets. Windows bring
light and space to the work areas. Storage
Julie and Rob are satisfied with their new home. cabinets cluster on interior walls.
Julie says, “Our home is the intimate interplay of
inside cozy places of sanctuary and outside gardens
splashing light and life through windows. The eye
and heart dance from one angle of beauty to another
as the intersections create a peaceful harmony.”

a g a r d e n c o t t ag e f o r l o w- i m pa c t l i v i n g 55
 Delineated by fu nction. A peninsula with
barstool seating defines the kitchen, while a stove
hearth and window seat invite relaxation in the
great room. A small altar marks the entrance to the
main bedroom.

56 c o t t ag e s
 Kitchen
Deck

Washer/dryer

North

Closet Dining
Master room
bedroom Skylights

Living
Bathroom room

Parking
Woodstove

Entry
Guest
bedroom

Closets

Mechanical
room

Making Small Seem Big

As an accessory dwelling, this house was limited by ordinance to having
0 2 4 8 ft. an interior no larger than 800 sq. ft. Long sightlines and shared spaces
make the public areas seem bigger, while the main bedroom’s location off
a short hall emphasizes privacy. Decks and porches, which are not subject
to the same size restrictions, were used to expand the house both visually
and physically. Carefully placed doors and windows provide access to
these decks and porches, as well as to the extensive gardens.

SPECS
Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1
Size: 800 sq. ft.
Cost: $270 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2012
Location: Eugene, Oregon
Architect: Nir Pearlson Architect;
www.green-building.com
Builder: Six Degrees Construction;
www.sixdegreesconstruction.com

a g a r d e n c o t t ag e f o r l o w- i m pa c t l i v i n g 57
58
 The Second
By charles
Charles bickford
Bickford Time Around

T
he tiny house wasn’t that old, but it was fail- How do you make more room in
ing fast. Built in 1950 by an industrial arts the same space?
class at Martha’s Vineyard High School, the At 625 sq. ft., the original house was euphemistically
house sat on a depression that didn’t drain; conse- cozy, realistically too small. The new design called
quently, it was rotting away. It was a tough situation for at least two bedrooms, two baths, and enough
for Ellen Epstein, who bought the house in the 1970s storage space for each of the seven families and all
as a three-season getaway. When she wasn’t there, their books. The big answer to the quandary was
she shared the house with seven families of old to add a second floor. This extra 400 sq. ft. allowed
friends, and everyone loved the place. But despite a for a multi-use loft/family room, a half-bathroom, a
community effort toward the upkeep and mainte- quiet upstairs bedroom, several closets, and a built-
nance, saving the structure was a losing battle. in desk. In turn, the first-floor areas became more
Ellen decided to demolish the house; then she spacious, with a larger bedroom, a full bath, and
hired the local South Mountain Co. to design and dining, kitchen, and living areas. Wilkinson used
build a new house that could be used year-round.
Because of the small lot’s setbacks, the house had to
remain in the same footprint, so the primary chal-
lenge for the design/build firm was to keep the house
small and in scale with the neighborhood, but to
increase the amenities and living space. The project
also marked the first time that South Mountain
designer Laurel Wilkinson and foreman Aaron Beck
took a new-home project from start to finish.

Compact and char ming. Built on the footprint of a

failing three-season house (right), the new 1,000-sq.-ft.
home is both energy and space efficient. Photo on the
before
facing page taken at A on floor plan.

59
 Second floor
four space-saving
features for a small Bedroom
floor plan

E
1. The most useful mudroom
Dn
possible. Use built-ins to stop
clutter at the entry.
2. Double-duty built-ins. A book- 3 Loft area Photos taken at
case stores the family favorites Desk nook lettered positions.
where a half-wall was needed
anyway.
3. Light-filled loft. At the top 0 2 4 8 ft.
of the stairs, an open loft is
another place for family mem- First floor
bers to get away.
4
4. An outside alternative. An Bedroom
alfresco shower works for this
family almost year-round and North
d
is a good example of how to
use space.
2
SPECS
b
Bedrooms: 2
Kitchen Up
Bathrooms: 11⁄ 2
Size: 1,018 sq. ft. Living area
Insulation: R-29 (walls); R-49 (roof) Dining area
Location: Vineyard Haven, c
Massachusetts
Architect/builder: South Mountain Co.
(Laurel Wilkinson, lead designer; 1 Entry
Aaron Beck, lead carpenter)

the footprint space that was previously occupied by a
porch to make a 50-sq.-ft. mudroom at the entrance,
which became Ellen’s favorite room.
Of course, there was a lot more to saving space
than just cutting up the floor plan. Built-in book-
cases, shelves, benches, and a desk all were fitted into
available space. Because the house is used primarily
in the warmer months, the second shower is outside,
a local tradition that doesn’t require the use of floor
space inside.
A tight envelope keeps
down energy costs
Ellen had hoped that her new house’s energy
requirements could be satisfied with solar power.
Unfortunately, a large oak tree stood between the
house and solar gain. The tree’s importance to the
lot was greater than that of the photovoltaic panels.
That didn’t mean Ellen couldn’t have an efficient
house. The builders first air-sealed and insulated the
frame. Triple-glazed windows from Loewen helped ®

60 c o t t ag e s
 The best room in the house. Built in
place of the former enclosed porch, the
mudroom’s tile floor and well-ordered
storage keep the rest of the house free of
sand, dirt, and outerwear. Double skylights
and windows brighten the 50-sq.-ft. space.
Photo taken at C on floor plan.

Innovativ e space. In the living area, a

bookshelf that doubles as a stair rail and a
stair tread that continues as a built-in bench
are two strategies to conserve space. Photo
taken at B on floor plan.

to keep the overall R-value high. Blower-door tests

were performed three times, yielding a final reading
several times tighter than code.
On the demand side, daylighting strategies and
energy-efficient appliances and lighting fixtures were
used to lighten the house’s load. Because the house is
built to be so tight, a point-source propane heater by
®
Jøtul in the living room is all that’s needed to heat
®
the structure. Enerjoy electric radiant panels (www
.sshcinc.com) mounted in the bedroom ceilings also
were added as a backup for cold winter nights.

Blending in with the

neighborhood
The house sits on a tiny road and occupies the
centermost of three small lots. The exterior is sided
with white-cedar shingles and trimmed in reclaimed
cypress, all of which will be allowed to weather.
Against that traditional backdrop, the builders trademark of sorts, and here it was offered without
added a few details that created a great deal of an extra charge by the window manufacturer. A
charm without a lot of expense. The unusual muntin simple trellis screens the entry, and a pergola pro-
arrangement in the windows is a South Mountain vides a shady spot for sitting outdoors.

the secon d tim e a rou n d 61

 ZiP roof sheathing

avoid thermal
bridging at
rafter tails are the roof.
applied over the
air-sealed envelope.

2×12 rim Cellulose-

filled 14-in.
Joint taped TJi (r-49)
for air-sealing

1-in. pine
sheathing

2×6 stud Plates

the multifu nction loft. At the top of wall
the stairs, a bright and open room serves
as a family room, study, or spare bedroom
as the occasion dictates. Separated from
the stairs by only a kneewall, the room feels
much bigger than its dimensions would indi-
cate. Photo taken at E on fl oor plan.

energy-Smart detailS
an airtight, highly insulated
structure doesn’t require much
in the way of heat to remain
comfortable in the winter. The
framed walls were filled with
cellulose and covered with a 21⁄2 -in. Cellulose-
layer of polyiso nail base for an filled 2×6
r-value of 29. The r-49 roof was wall assembly
framed with 14-in. TJi i-joists filled (r-29)
with cellulose. The sheathing seams
were taped and caulked to prevent
air leaks, and housewrap was added
for cheap insurance as an air and
bulk-water barrier. The foundation
was insulated with layers of rigid
foam to r-18 for the walls and r-20
for the floors.
91⁄2 -in.
cellulose

a thermally
protected sill
3-in. layer
of rigid
insulation
(r-18)

21⁄2 -in. polyiso

nail base 4-in.
extends past 2×10 concrete
the sill plates. rim joist slab

ZiP wall
sheathing 2×6
infor m alit y SuitS thiS k itchen. Made
double
of reclaimed cypress, the open shelves and sill
cabinets make effi cient, accessible storage. 4-in. layer of rigid
2×3 pressure-
Larger items are stored on the continuous insulation (r-20)
treated rodent
shelf that runs across the tops of the cabi- protection
nets. Photo taken at D on fl oor plan.

62 c o t t ag e s
 Small Cottage Makes
By DaViD eVaNs a Big Splash

A
professor in architecture school once told
me that good design often is measured by
what’s not there. This project started out as
a guesthouse for a much grander master plan. In-
stead, it evolved into a simpler solution and became
an exercise in seeking delight in the minimal and in
keeping down the scale to emphasize the detail.

A tall basement for a steep lot

Located in a small historic town on Puget Sound in
Washington, this house was to be a second home for
my wife and me, with hopes that it would become
our permanent dwelling. After a long search we
found a site with many wonderful features—along
with some daunting challenges.
The corner lot in an old neighborhood had been
overgrown and neglected for years. But it was
blessed with panoramic views of the Sound over the
neighbors’ rooftops. More thorny issues were that
the lot sat next to a major crosstown street with a
fair bit of traffic noise and that the site sloped steeply
downhill toward the views.
To maximize the views, we located the house in
Sloping towar d the viewS. A 12-ft.-tall walk-out
the highest corner of the lot. I oriented the long basement puts the main fl oor high enough to enjoy the
dimension of the house in the direction of the slope, panoramic views of Puget Sound.

which maximized solar gain. Unfortunately, though,

the grade in this corner sloped 14 ft. over the length

63
 The low-m aintenance stucco exter ior was applied directly
over walls of concrete and foam. Photo taken at A on floor plan.

of the house. The city required that auto access be
from the side street, which put the driveway and
garage on the lowest part of the lot. A 12-ft.-tall
foundation houses the garage and walk-out base-
ment, and it places the main floor of the house at the
right level for the upper grade of the lot.
A house of small additions
I put the entrance on the main level where it would
relate better to the street. Boosted by the tall base-
ment, the public spaces on this level now look out
over the neighboring rooftops to the Sound. How-
ever, a third floor above the main level would have
grown the building to over 34 ft. from the lowest
floor to the peak of its 15-in-12 pitch roof. Rather
than present such a tall facade to the street, I de-
cided to make the house a story-and-a-half tall. This
height gives the house better proportions and makes
the loft level feel like a converted attic.
To blend in the house with the established neigh-
borhood, I used antique materials and designed
the house to look like it had been added on to over
time. I started with a simple rectangular footprint.
A small bump-out addition to the south houses a

64 c o t t ag e s
 Stacked and Compact
To make use of a small footprint, this house stacks two
floors on top of a tall walk-out basement. The lower level
houses the garage and utilities as well as a small auxiliary
bunkroom.

Storage Observation
nook
Guest
bedroom Open to
Dn Sitting below
area

Storage
Upper level

Going up instea d of out. The public spaces on the Blind corners house a
hamper for the bathroom
main level are blessed with views of Puget Sound. The and a roll-out dish caddy
house’s story-and-a-half design makes the upper level for the kitchen.
feel like a converted attic.

Dining area

b Window
stairwell, with a lower entry and bunkroom on the Pantry below Up seat
stairs d
garage level. On the main level this addition expands Living room
Bedroom
to include a lean-to entry porch, the entrance vesti- c

bule, and a sunny sitting room off the living room. Dn Sitting room
Another addition on the north side helps to break
a
up the tall and unrelieved elevation (see the photo
Entry porch Main level
above). This dormered addition makes space for a
utility area in the garage; a large, compartmental-
ized main-floor bathroom; and an observation nook
Utility area
on the upper level.

ICF walls address

seismic concerns Garage

Building tall and narrow in the northwestern part

of the country always raises seismic red flags. A wall
system of insulated-concrete forms (ICFs) deals with Up
this issue. This system is very strong and resistant to Bunkroom
earth movements. But strength is just the beginning.
In the extreme coastal environment, rot and SPECS Lower level
deterioration due to weather are a constant worry. Bedrooms: 2
Photos taken at
Bathrooms: 11⁄ 2 North
The insulated-concrete wall system eliminates wood Size: 1,200 sq. ft.
lettered positions.

in the exterior walls. We veneered the outside of Completed: 2001

Location: Washington 0 2 4 8 ft.
the ICFs with bluestone to lend visual weight to the Architect: David Evans
Builder: Starwest Construction
lower level. Integrally colored stucco applied directly

s m a l l c o t t ag e m a k e s a b i g s p l a s h 65

a driveway
that you mow
With our house sitting at the top of the
slope, the city was concerned about runoff
ending up in the neighbor’s lot downhill. Our
solution was a product called Grasspave2
(www.invisiblestructures.com), which pro-
duces a drivable grown-in turf surface. We
literally turned our lawn into a driveway and
parking area.
Grasspave2 is a porous paving system that
creates enough load-bearing capacity for a
large vehicle while providing a medium for
growing grass without compaction. The key
ingredient is a ring-and-grid mat that sits on
a layer of gravel and sand. The mat comes
as square-meter or quarter-meter sections
assembled into rolls. The mat is filled with
sand for proper drainage, and grass grows in
the sand. Surface water drains to the middle
of the site via perforated drainpipe. The lawn
we planted obscures the mat. The rest of the
yard was seeded with a wildflower mix for a
low-maintenance natural look.
66 c o t t ag e s
to the insulated forms gives the rest of the walls a
durable low-maintenance finish. The walls also even
out interior temperature swings between day and
night. As a side benefit, the thick walls also help to
mitigate street noise.
I chose steel-sash windows for their low mainte-
nance. Instead of wood trim, we beveled the edges
of the forms around the window and door openings
to create stucco returns on the outside and plaster
returns inside. The only trim pieces are the heavy
bluestone sills inside and out for each window.
Recycled Roof Completes
the Cottage Look
I wanted a roof as low-maintenance as the exterior of
the house. Authentic Roof (www.authenticroof.com),
a recycled rubber product, looks like slate but is
much easier to install and costs much less. I capped
the ridges with clay tiles from Great Britain.
The exposed rafter tails actually are 4-ft.-long
pieces of 3×5 cedar spliced onto the conventional
2×10 rafters and evenly spaced across the eaves. Fir
2×4s finish the exposed roof deck. The rafter tails
were set at a lower pitch to give the roof a more
relaxed look at the edges.
The cottage appearance is enhanced by the large
half-round zinc gutters and downspouts. The eave
and rake trim, along with the oversize gable vents,
are made of cedar in a simple Asian pattern.
Living Compact
Living in the confines of a small house is appealing
because, by design, it creates a feeling of closeness
and intimacy. The galley kitchen opens into the din-
ing and living areas to enhance the spatial flow while
reinforcing a sense of community in the house.
In a more controversial move, the house is
equipped with only one full bathroom. But to
make that bath accommodate two people at once,
the shower and toilet each have their own separate
compartments. Two sinks allow for simultaneous
grooming as well.
 Su nn y sit ting. To
keep a sense of open-
ness in this compact
house, the public spaces
open into one another.
Here, an arched open-
ing provides a visual
separation for a sitting
room off the living room.
Photo taken at C on
floor plan.

Despite its size, the main floor boasts many dif-
ferent places to settle. In addition to the living- and
dining-room areas, an arched opening leads into a
sunny sitting room. A built-in seat in front of the
tall arch-top window is the perfect spot to relax and
watch the sailboats on the Sound in the distance.
We paid special attention to maximizing the
storage in our limited space. The kitchen is a
perfect example. We chose compact appliances
and a low-profile retractable range hood that use a
minimum amount of space. To solve the blind-
corner cabinet problem, I designed a dish-storage

s m a l l c o t t ag e m a k e s a b i g s p l a s h 67
Tin y bu t fu nctional .
Although tiny in area, this gal-
ley uses space judiciously to
create a full working kitchen. In
addition to other space-saving
appliances, the narrow-profile
range hood switches on when
it’s extended.

Ev ery cor ner put to use.

A dish caddy that lives in the
blind corner of the peninsula
rolls over to the small but roomy
dishwasher for quick unloading.
The other blind corner is home
to a hamper that opens to the
bathroom.

Tak ing the galley out of the k itchen. A

curved soffit and an angular peninsula open the
kitchen into the dining area to make it seem larger.
Photo taken at B on floor plan.

68 c o t t ag e s
caddy that can be wheeled to the dishwasher. The
other blind corner becomes a pullout hamper that is
next to the bathroom.
A showcase for fine
craftsmanship
Inside the main entry, all of the major interior mate-
rials are introduced in the vestibule: creamy yellow
hand-troweled plaster, mahogany, yellow cedar, and
Douglas fir. This simple palette is repeated through-
out the house to unify the compact spaces and to call
out special elements crafted by local artisans.
The custom cabinetry in the kitchen and bath-
room features simple mahogany frames with flat
Douglas-fir panels. A dramatic curved soffit above
the kitchen peninsula ushers the eye into the vertical
expanse of the living and dining room. A surprising
periwinkle-blue Italian plaster ceiling carries down
onto the walls in a playful, undulating pattern. To
enhance the drama, the outer face of the kitchen
peninsula and a thick battered wall adjacent to
the kitchen angle as if leaning into the living and
dining room.
From the main entry, a heavy mahogany and fir
door leads to an artful staircase that winds to the
upper level. Conceived of more as a piece of cabi-
netry than as a staircase, the project resulted from
a long collaboration between local woodworker
Gaylen Marrs and me. Infill panels around a pantry
closet feature a carved tableau of a local coastal pine.
The wood details are complemented by an exuber-
ant wrought-iron railing that was hand-forged by
local blacksmith Steve Lopes. A sinuous mahogany
handrail slithers from the iron volute below to the
gooseneck at the top. Marrs carved the top of the
newel at the center of the stair to mimic a decon-
structed log.
Stair s as art. (left) The centerpiece for the
fine craftsmanship in this house is the stairway to
the upper level. A tree carved in relief grows out
of the stair skirt and wraps around a small closet
pantry. Photo taken at D on floor plan.
The new el continues the theme. (above
left and right) The center newel is carved to look
like a tree trunk breaking down. A serpentine
mahogany railing caps off the wrought-iron balus-
trade and then winds its way to the upper level.
s m a l l c o t t ag e m a k e s a b i g s p l a s h 69
A Higher
Standard
F
or a number of years, Rob and Fiona were
content to live in a simple Maine cottage a
stone’s throw from the water’s edge. In recent
years, however, they had tried having a new house
designed to accommodate their changing needs, but
quickly got mired in results that were much larger
and more expensive than what they wanted. After
tiring of these unsuccessful ventures, they came
to my firm seeking a compact, modern, extremely
energy-efficient home that would blend into the
tightly woven neighborhood where they planned to
root themselves for the years to come.
We set to work applying our studio’s motto—
beautiful, sustainable, attainable—to the project.
Our early meetings quickly centered on the meaning
of cottage in the 21st century. We wondered if the
term still defined the classic British buildings of Rob
and Fiona’s youth, which so successfully fit between
clusters of lavender and privet hedges, or if cottage
had come to mean something bolder and simpler
with less of the romantic touchstones of 19th-
century construction. We concluded that we needed
to draw on each of these ideas, and that the house
would need to be simple, tough, and practical, in
keeping with the Maine life that Rob and Fiona love.
70 c o t t ag e s
By Jesse Thompson
We thought that a house approximately 1,800 sq.
ft. in size would be able to meet their budget and
allow for the quality of design and construction they
desired. Early on it became evident that their goals
included very low energy use, nontoxic materials, a
quiet and simple aesthetic, bedrooms that faced the
water, a flexible office space, and LEED certification.
Ultimately, we designed a house that met all those
wishes. The house feels spacious and comfortable,
it’s certified LEED Platinum, it beats the Passive
House airtightness standard by 30 percent, and it
meets the Architecture 2030 Challenge of reducing
fossil-fuel use by 70 percent when measured against
average homes in the region. Although we were able
to accomplish all of this for only $175 per sq. ft., we
had to navigate plenty of challenges along the way to
make the project a reality.
m ak ing the most of the site. The
home’s back rises dramatically to capture
light and views.
a big lit tle house on the r idge 71

The site dictates form
and layout
Rob and Fiona’s site was challenging. The outstand-
ing views on the property are to the west. However,
the axis of the Flying Point Peninsula on which the
house sits stretches from northeast to southwest, and
solar south didn’t align with either direction.
We generated a variety of sketches to test the best
house position. The most comfortable scheme locked
the main axis of the house perpendicular to the
road, which is typical of homes in the neighborhood,
but we twisted the interior views along the diagonal
and placed large corner windows in all important
rooms. We also pushed the prime rooms toward the
back of the house as close to the water as we could,
letting the house rise up in a simple wedge shape to
cover the spaces inside. This provided interior rooms
with stunning ocean views and allowed us to chase
72 c o t t ag e s
blending in. The
home’s front is simple
and traditional in detail
and scale to fit its setting.
as much southern exposure for the triple-glazed
windows as we could, exposing the slab to as much
free heat as possible.
The resulting house shape feels quiet and centered,
and the approach to the structure provides a gradual
introduction to the home. A modest gabled porch
connects to a timber-frame carport and presents a
welcoming entry, not unlike the many cottages on
this part of the coast.
High-stakes, straightforward
construction
Our design methodology revolves around marrying
a smart building shell to as small and affordable a
mechanical system as we can specify. This building
site had several fuel options available: electricity,
propane, oil, and wood. We haven’t installed an oil
boiler in a house in many years because we think
First floor

Office

SPECS
Bedrooms: 2
Living
Bathrooms: 21⁄2
Pantry Size: 1,800 sq. ft.
Cost: $175 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2010
Location: Freeport, Maine
Architects: Jesse Thompson and Richard Lo;
Dining www.kaplanthompson.com
Builder: Monaghan Woodworks;
Kitchen www.mwoodworks.com

Mechanical
room
Den
Porch Up

Foyer

0 2 4 8 ft.
Carport

Entry
North

Bathroom/laundry

Second floor
that it’s far too toxic and inefficient to store 275 gal.
of hydrocarbons inside a modern building. Also,
Bedroom
with loft a masonry chimney had no place in the project
for other reasons. Rob and Fiona didn’t want air
Master
bedroom conditioning, so a major advantage of heat pumps
would have been wasted on the project. Therefore,
Bath we designed the house around a simple, single-zone
propane-fired in-slab radiant-heating system, with
Dn the help of a flat-plate solar system designed to
Master produce 60 percent of the likely hot-water needs of
bath
the family. By keeping complicated mixing valves,
Storage pumps, and controls out of the project, we were able
to free a substantial amount of money to improve
Walk-in the quality of the building shell without raising
closet
construction costs. This was significant because such
a simple mechanical system wouldn’t work without a
tough, warm building surrounding it.
We worked closely with the builder to evaluate
various costs and construction methods for the
walls and roof. The most economical method proved

a h i g h e r s t a n da r d 73
 nine details of a
high-performance
design

1. A heavily insulated concrete slab-on-grade foun-

dation eliminates the need for deep excavation
below the high-water line, sump pumps that can
1
⁄2 -in.
ZIP System
fail, expensive basement insulation, and the
wall- accompanying drywall.
sheathing
air barrier 2. An initial design with 12-in.-thick walls yields a
well-insulated assembly. It’s always easier to thin
Boxes made up walls if necessary to gain space later in the
from 3⁄4 -in. planning stage than to have to go in the other
plywood cap
the rough direction.
opening
between 3. A high-quality, well-sealed, and verified building
stud walls. shell is a must. Careful flashing details and rigor-
LSL rim
ous air-sealing measures are verified with multiple
joist blower-door tests throughout construction.
4. A house should breathe through a set of lungs,
Blocking
between not by hoping that fresh air will somehow find its
joists way inside. A high-quality ventilation system with
contains
insulation.
heat recovery ensures health and efficiency.
5. An exterior air barrier comprised of ZIP System®
wall sheathing with taped seams is the easiest to
build. A simple house form with overhangs and
other details added after taping the basic box
made hitting 0.4 ACH50 possible.
6. Self-adhesive flashing membranes stick poorly
Engineered
joist to ZIP sheathing. Flashing membranes should be
stuck onto the ZIP tape that has been applied to
Load-bearing
2×4 wall the sheathing.
Dense-pack 7. Spray foam around windows leaks. Water moves
cellulose
through pinhole “folds” in the foam at the rough
2×4 pressure- openings. Caulking the spray foam to stop leak-
treated plate
over EPDM age around the windows is necessary.
gasket and
caulking 8. Concrete slabs leak air far more than expected.
Air moves through the crushed-stone layer,
4-in. rigid right through the insulation gap at the slab
insulation
edge and into the conditioned space. It takes a
considerable amount of tape and caulk to seal
4-in. slab this transition.
with radiant
heating 9. You don’t need spray-foam insulation and/or air-
tight drywall for rigorous air-sealing. A sheathing
air barrier, tape, and caulk do this well.

74 c o t t ag e s
to be double 2×4 walls with an exterior air barrier, tractor who brought his blower door on site as soon
dense-packed with cellulose insulation. The roof was as the ZIP System sheathing shell was in place and
framed with 14-in. I-joists also dense-packed with the windows were installed. They carefully swept
cellulose. Our insulating target was based on a 5-20- over the entire building skin before any insulation
40-60 building enclosure as laid out by Building showed up on the project, and took our 1.0 ACH50
Science Corp. for our climate zone: R-5 windows, specification as a challenge to be crushed. After we
R-20 underslab insulation, R-40 walls, and R-60 roof. told them that the hardest metric to hit was the Pas-
Our approach to the house’s assembly, though sive House standard of 0.6 ACH50, they raised their
not revolutionary, was proven extraordinary when game even further. The final blower-door number,
the mechanical-sub bids came back. We went out taken when the house was complete, came back
for three bids. One price was more than $30,000 at 0.4 ACH50, with less than 150 cfm50 moving
and added staple-up radiant tubing under the entire through the fan under pressure.
second floor in addition to our specified equip-
ment. Another came back with a handwritten note Giving the house lungs
declining to bid because the contractor had never The goal of the mechanical system was to keep it
seen such low heat loads and didn’t believe they simple and low cost. To ensure that this was pos-
were possible to achieve. The final bid came in from sible, we carefully integrated the HRV system into
a contractor who trusted our heat-loss calculations the construction system. We laid out all the inte-
and bid $15,000. The $15,000 we saved paid for all rior ductwork in consultation with the ventilation
the upgrades of insulation and for the triple-glazing contractor, checking for clashes throughout the 3D
in the windows.
Triple-glazed windows typically eat up a sig-
nificant portion of a construction budget, so we
carefully consider the units we use. For this house,
we chose InLine Fiberglass windows out of Toronto.
These windows were well priced compared to
similar products, the fiberglass exterior was ideal
for a tough waterfront location, they were available
with high solar-heat gain Cardinal 179 glazing, and
they had great design-pressure values to prevent
water infiltration and air leakage. The windows are
a combination of fixed, casement, and awning units.
Using large fixed lites in combination with smaller
operable units is the most economical way to get
large windows into a low-budget project.
None of these design efforts would have been
worthwhile, however, if the house wasn’t built to
be airtight. The contracting firm on the project had
built many nice homes and had years of experience
with coastal construction. This was their first LEED
project, however, as well as their first project target-
Cap tur ing the su n's energy. The windows are
ing an ambitious air-sealing specification. They oriented to enable valuable daylight to heat the house
teamed up with a high-quality local cellulose con- passively during Maine’s notoriously cold winters.

a h i g h e r s t a n da r d 75
 CAD model with framing members or vertical ele-
ments. We specified open-web floor joists to allow
easy mechanical, plumbing, and electrical coordina-
tion in a house with no attic or basement. Adding
a few dropped ceilings gave us extra room for
mechanical runs in certain areas.
Efficiency complemented by
coast-appropriate finishes
The Maine coast can be a brutal environment to live
and work in. Just like the people who live in them,
the homes here experience some of the most severe
76 c o t t ag e s
weather conditions in the country. Wind and water
come from all directions, and leaky windows and
walls provide regular tales of woe from local con-
tractors and homeowners up and down the coast.
Houses here need to be built with resilient materi-
als. Rob and Fiona also wanted to use as many local,
renewable, and nontoxic materials in their home’s
construction as possible. Our contractor kept a close
watch to ensure that highly off-gassing sealants
didn’t creep onto the job site, and we worked hard
to make sure that no sheet goods containing urea
formaldehyde or other noxious products ended up

in the building. The flooring was a simple palette
of polished concrete and carbonized bamboo with
water-based polyurethane, both of which are incred-
ibly durable. We used local lumber for all the fram-
ing and the exposed exterior woodwork, primarily
hemlock and white cedar.
The siding is factory-finished fiber cement, which
we applied on the flat over furring strips. We used
standard smooth fiber-cement clapboards for the
upper siding section on 1×3 furring strips, and
fiber-cement battens on 2×4 furring strips on the
lower section for added visual depth at the base of
Cap tur ing the view. Contem-
porary interior spaces are arranged
at the back of the house, adjacent
to large corner windows that pro-
vide water views in the most-often-
used spaces.
the house. In addition, the contractor upgraded the
window sill pans and horizontal flashings to copper
for true 100-year durability and a more elegant look.
This house is a proud moment in the history of
our firm. We worked to bring a fine grain of detail-
ing to the durable, low-energy construction tech-
niques we have deployed on previous projects at
the same time that we managed to evoke the serene
modernism that our clients love. That feels like
success to us.
a h i g h e r s t a n da r d 77
Carriage-House
Comeback
I
n Seattle, several small houses are popping up, but
they are not where you might expect. Modeled on
carriage houses of old, these backyard cottages are
second houses on the same lots as primary resi-
dences. They offer occupants established, walkable
neighborhoods, with the public transportation and
local businesses sorely lacking in far-flung suburbs.
To keep the cottages in sync with neighborhood
character, Seattle’s new zoning ordinance is strict: In
addition to conforming to typical total lot coverage,
setbacks, and off-street parking, a cottage can be no
more than 800 net sq. ft., with a 23-ft. height limit.
The net-square-footage rule means that the thick-
ness of the walls is not included in the total amount
of living space.
Our firm, CAST architecture, was itching to
design a house that would satisfy the city’s new
rules and whatever needs a client might bring to the
party. Enter Ken and Marilyn Widner. They had
been thinking about downsizing after retirement,
and having a new cottage seemed like the perfect
solution to update their lifestyle without having to
leave their beloved neighborhood. Instead of spend-
ing time cleaning the 3,000-sq.-ft. house they raised
their family in, they would be able to rent it and
spend time traveling.
78 c o t t ag e s
By Matt Hutchins
Their goals didn’t stop there. The Widners wanted
to keep as much yard as possible for gardening, to
build green, to harvest rainwater, and to make space
for their vinyl LP collection and mementos collected
from a lifetime of travel. The new house also had to
be a good neighbor to the turn-of-the-20th-century
bungalows lining the street.
We sat down with the site map, subtracted the set-
backs, and calculated the available lot coverage. The
maximum buildable footprint was 452 sq. ft. With a
two-story house, we were in business.
Compromises and a
comfortable kitchen
Not everything magically fits into a smaller foot-
print. At our first meeting we sketched out the
basics: a two-bedroom house with 11⁄ 2 baths. Some
choices were easy, such as skipping a formal dining
Outdoor rooms m ak e sm all houses
l arger . A dining table and chairs extend the
living space to the garden. Buried beneath
the patio, a 1,500-gal. cistern stores runoff
for toilets, laundry, and irrigation. The steeply
pitched gable roof echoes those of neighbor-
ing houses. Photo taken at A on floor plan.
c a r r i ag e - h o u s e c o m e b a c k 79
 No Wasted Space
room; summertime dining in the garden would take
Locating storage, stairs, and the radiant-floor boiler closet on
the west wall allowed plenty of windows on the east wall. The its place. In the entry, we opted for a coatrack in-
kitchen has lots of counter space, but not much floor space,
which encourages guests to stay on the dining-table side of the stead of a closet. Upstairs, a stackable washer/dryer
peninsula. coupled with a big linen closet eliminated the need
First floor
for a laundry room. Other decisions were tough; for
example, the cottage doesn’t have a tub, much to
Marilyn’s chagrin.
b Marilyn does a lot of cooking and baking. She
Kitchen
needed a big work counter with space around the
stove and ample cabinets, but she didn’t need floor
area for multiple cooks. We pored through every
d
Powder drawer in her original kitchen to learn what Marilyn
Dining
room area needed space for in her new kitchen. Now Marilyn
is never more than a few steps from every dish,
spatula, and cookie sheet, and she still has plenty of
room for her giant paella pan.
Living
c area

a Focus on the gar den. (facing page)

Up Clustering storage, stairs, and the pow-
der room along the west wall allowed
plenty of east-facing windows overlook-
SPECS ing the garden. The big peninsula is cook-
Bedrooms: 2 ing central, with a bar, space for buffets,
Entry Bathrooms: 11⁄ 2 dish storage, and glass display. A slightly
Size: 854 sq. ft. gross; 800 sq. ft. net
lower ceiling on the west side of the
Cost: $351 per gross sq. ft.
Completed: 2011 living room is a subtle suggestion of the
0 2 4 8 ft. Location: Seattle path through the house. Photo taken at C
Architect: CAST architecture, Seattle on floor plan.
Builder: Zoltan Farkas
Second floor

North

f
Dn Master
Laundry bedroom

e Fu n w ith color .
Rubicund walls in
the powder room
add a sumptuous
Guest backdrop for an
bedroom antique mirror and
a retro bucket sink.
The porthole re-
flected in the mirror
Photos taken at
is over the com-
lettered positions. mode. Photo taken
at D on floor plan.

80 c o t t ag e s
 No dow nstair s parti-
tions. Long diagonal
views from the kitchen to
the entry stretch the sense
of space. The tansu-style
staircase packs a lot of
storage into a small space.
Like the floor, the tansu
unit is made of engineered
bamboo. Photo taken at B
on floor plan.

c a r r i ag e - h o u s e c o m e b a c k 81
 Inhabit the roof.
The vaulted ceilings
and window bump-out
in the master bedroom
heighten the sense of
space. Barn doors close
off the room for privacy
when guests are in town.
Photos taken at F and E
on floor plan.

82 c o t t ag e s
Cathedral ceilings and long
views energize the house focus on details
Vaulting a ceiling can make all the difference be-
tween drab and dramatic. Upstairs, we vaulted all
Details breathe life into a house. By having less
the ceilings and placed skylights in every room and
square footage, the Widners could concentrate
in the walk-in closet. Seattle’s gray winter skies are on better materials and fixtures. Here are some
actually filled with bright, even light—enough to highlights:
keep the lights off. In the bathroom the light stream-
Custom cherry cabinetry
ing from above bounces off the azure glass tiles, giv- ■■

■■ Custom metal railings with stainless-steel

ing the whole room a sun-kissed Mediterranean feel. cable rail
To make the cottage feel big, we ganged the closed ■■ Premium double-hung windows from Marvin®
functions (storage, cabinets, bathrooms, utilities) and portholes from Andersen®
and pushed them to the north and west walls, ■■ Copper gutter and rain chain
Vertical-grain Douglas-fir trim and doors
where windows would have been facing neighbor-
■■

■■ Glass tile in the master bath

ing houses. The staircase became a tansu cabinet ■■
housing the stereo, LPs, flat-screen TV, books, and
mementos. Behind the TV, a boiler for the hydronic ■■
radiant floors is accessed from outside. This left a
■■
relatively large area with great light on the east and
south overlooking the garden. A room with a view ■■
will always feel bigger than it is.
An antique mirror and powder-room retro bucket
sink from Alape®
A custom pot rack made of the rock screen used
by quarries to separate gravel
A laminated bamboo handrail that resembles
custom inlay, which is simply two layers of Plyboo®
Radiant floors (concrete downstairs,
Warmboard® upstairs)

A year later
The Widners’ cottage has been the talk of the neigh-
borhood—not because of its size, but because of how
it feels large and cozy at the same time. When we
hosted an open house for the public last July, one
person commented in disbelief, “800 square feet? It
feels like twice that.” Having lived in the house for
a year now, Ken and Marilyn wouldn’t want all that
extra space anyway.

c a r r i ag e - h o u s e c o m e b a c k 83
A Pocket-Size House
That Lives Large By Timothy Gordon

E
vening is the best time to arrive at Leslie Design multi-use spaces
Gordon’s house on the Oregon coast. The whenever possible
driveway cuts through a dense swath of spruce If they’re planned with ingenuity, rooms can serve
forest. At the crest of the hill it opens to a clearing, several functions without compromises. The heart of
revealing a sheltered cluster of hip-roofed buildings the house is the central common space. This 12-ft. by
surrounded by a stone-walled garden. As you step 20-ft. room with a 17-ft.-tall vaulted ceiling func-
onto the path, you can look into the windows and tions as both the living room and the dining room.
directly through the house to the setting sun and far It’s visually linked to the exterior with glass doors
below, to the Pacific Ocean. and windows that go down to the floor. I didn’t have
It’s a straightforward house, modest by most
standards, but I know it was designed with a lot of
thought, because I’m the architect, and the client is
my mother.
After living and working as a professor in Fair-
banks for nearly 30 years, Mom wanted to escape
Alaska’s cold, dark winters. She found the perfect
site two hours from Portland, in a small beach com-
munity called Neskowin.
She wanted a small house (it is 1,500 sq. ft.), that
included an office, a quilting room, and a garden
that was an integral part of the living space. I knew
the local cottage style would be my inspiration and
that I’d have to pack a lot into this small house. So I
took my design cues from homes in the region, and I
Dining out. Leslie Gordon’s house was designed for
used the following five strategies to make the house single living, but it adapts easily to company, thanks
feel bigger than it really is. to a deck that invites outdoor living. Her son, Tim, was
the architect.

84 c o t t ag e s
 Tur n up the volume. A vaulted
ceiling and a wall of glass combine
to create the illusion that the living
room, located in the center of the
house, is twice its size.

W eather per mit ting. The house

is sited to take full advantage of
ocean views and to protect the
homeowner’s four-season gardens
from offshore winds.

a p o c k e t- s i z e h o u s e t h a t l i v e s l a r g e 85
 A room for quilting. (below left) A serious quilter, Leslie needed
a dedicated room to work in and a place to store her fabric palette.
Custom cubicles in her studio make it easy for her to see her collection,
and a sliding quilt wall allows her to pin up her designs as she sews.

We also combined the home office and master

A pl ace for l au ndry, and guests too. The room
was designed primarily as a quilting studio, but much
of the time it does double-duty as a laundry room.
When need be, the appliances are hidden, the quilt
wall slides over to act as a screen, the cantilevered
table is tucked away, the sofa bed is made up, and the
room is transformed into a comfortable guest suite.
a lot of space to work with, so I separated the dining
and living areas with subtle changes in flooring and
lighting. The dining area floor is at the same level as
the entry and kitchen on the other side of the fire-
place. The living room area, however, is a step down,
and the flooring changes from tile to wood (see the
floor plan on p. 91). I emphasized the separation by
placing each area on a separately controlled bank
of lights.
bedroom into one room. The office has its own
distinct corner, with a built-in desk located to take
advantage of the view (see the photo above). Facing
away from the rest of the room, with its own bank of
ceiling lights and surrounded by shelving, the office
area feels like a separate space.
We were still left needing a guest room, a quilting
studio, space for mechanicals, and a laundry room.
We managed to fit them all into one 13-ft. by 14-ft.
pavilion on the other side of the entry.
First we had to make sure the room functioned
well as a quilting studio, its best and highest calling.
The sewing machine sits on a removable cantilevered
table next to a long work counter. Mom’s fabric
palette is in built-in cubicles on the wall. In front, a
quilt-design wall rolls back and forth on a stainless-
steel rail. The rolling wall usually sits in front of the
door to a small mechanical room and moves out
of the way when access is needed. The washer and
dryer are tucked beneath the work counter, which
makes a good surface for folding clothes. When
guests stay over, the sewing machine is put away,

86 c o t t ag e s
 Cor ner office. (left) A simple, unclut-
tered design, a built-in desk, and plenty
of room for books and rolling files allow
a separate work area to function inde-
pendently within the master bedroom.

cabinet doors block the view of the washer and

dryer, and a sofa pulls out to become a bed, trans-
forming the room into a private, comfortable guest
suite with its own bath.

Create a space for welcome

and transition
An entry, however small, makes a home feel welcom-
ing and eases the transition from the outside. With
such a small house, I was not able to devote much
room to the entry, so I designed it as a glass breeze-
way between the quilting studio and the rest of the
house and added covered porches on both sides to
expand the space. Another trick I used to save space
was designing the entry to open to the front garden
terrace on one side and the back deck on the other.
Because of the wet Oregon weather and our
A clear path . (above and top) Because
proximity to the beach, the entry had to be a true the entry is tucked between the main house
mudroom, so we gave the entry storage closet and the quilting studio, the way in had to
be crystal clear. The entrance through the
plenty of room for coats, shoes, pet supplies, hiking
garden is flanked by stone columns capped
boots, and backpacks. I also strategically placed the with lights.
outdoor shower near the deck-side door, with the
laundry area in the quilting studio nearby.

a p o c k e t- s i z e h o u s e t h a t l i v e s l a r g e 87

Extend the living room
with gardens and decks
Outdoor rooms increase a home’s living space and
open up the interior. Besides quilting, Mom’s other
passion is gardening. She wanted a small, sheltered
garden that she could tend 12 months of the year
and see from inside the house (see the sidebar on
the facing page). So when we designed the garden
we thought of it as a series of framed views from the
house. Because you can see so much of the landscape
from the house, small interior spaces expand as the
88 c o t t ag e s
A roof w ith a view. (above) A dis-
tinct outdoor dining room is created by
covering just part of the broad deck. It’s
a natural place for entertaining.
Div er sit y in the gar den. (far left)
Low walls, decks, concrete benches,
and strategically placed plantings all
delineate spaces within the sheltered
garden.
Light at the end of the galley.
(left) The narrow kitchen has a wide
ocean view at the end, making the room
feel more spacious.
lush colors and life of the garden are drawn in. In
effect, the garden gives our eyes and minds more
room to roam.
I think of a deck as an outdoor room, and an extra
room of any kind is important in a small house.
This deck is large—more than 1,000 sq. ft.—with all
of the rooms on the west side opening on to it. But
even a small deck gives you another place to go. I
designed a covered area just outside the kitchen for
dining and entertaining.
my garden
reminds me i’m
home at last
Views to ocean

I recen tly re a d a research article about Master

how gardening is good for the soul, and I bdrm
believe it. The Fairbanks, Alaska, growing
season is short but strong, and our front yard Kitchen Living
used to overflow with annuals, perennials, room Bdrm
and vegetables. But for 30 years I reluctantly
left my garden at the beginning of Sep-
tember after the first hard frost. With little Entry
Views to the garden
snowfall for protection and cold snaps down
Quilting
to –50°F, even the hardiest perennials often
studio
do not survive, and the garden process must Outdoor
shower
begin from scratch every spring.
By contrast, in Neskowin the garden is
part of my every day. I can sit in my quilting
studio 12 months a year and watch flowers
bloom and hear my fountain gurgle. Even
better, I can get out into my garden because
it is sheltered from the elements by the
wrap-around design of the house and garage Garage
and the giant Sitka spruce trees. I often
spend entire days pruning, repositioning, and
adding to the plantings. All of this with the
knowledge that I am molding the garden over
time and that what I leave in the fall will still
be there in the spring. I feel that I have finally
found the place I was meant to be.

—Leslie Gordon, homeowner

Drawing the Eye Outside

The Gordon home is built on a narrow slice of a lot, with nearby
neighbors, woods on three sides, and a spectacular view of the
Pacific Ocean. The small house feels more expansive because
its windows are strategically placed to take advantage of the
ocean and garden views (indicated by the arrows) while keeping
neighboring houses out of sight. The decks and many outdoor
sitting areas visually extend the sense of space and provide
“rooms” for activities beyond the house itself.

a p o c k e t- s i z e h o u s e t h a t l i v e s l a r g e 89
 Shelf life. (right) So the space
under the hearth wouldn’t go to
waste, a narrow wood-storage
bin was built into a shelf there.

Simplify spaces and add storage

with built-ins
The more storage and function you build into the
structure, the more room you have left to live in. In
just about every room we relied on built-in cabinets
and shelves for storage and display. You might think
that fixtures built into walls would make spaces feel
smaller, but the opposite is true. Built-ins allow the
lines of the room to remain clean, and they cut down
on the amount of furniture that takes up floor space.
The display wall in the living room is a prime
example (see the photo at left). We could never
duplicate with furniture the amount of storage and
display space this built-in affords us. We hid the TV
in another built-in above the hearth. And below the
hearth is a shelf to hold firewood. This means that
the only furniture needed in the living room is a
chair, sofa, and side tables.
Recessed lighting also kept the areas uncluttered.
Instead of lights suspended from the ceiling or lamps
on tables or on the floor, I used directional recessed
lights as both task and ambient lighting.

Built-ins giv e you room to mov e.

Thoughtfully designed display shelves in the
living room and the second bedroom eliminate
the need for additional furnishings, so the
spaces feel more open and roomy.

90 c o t t ag e s
 Holding it together . The rooms in a
small house can feel crowded and discon-
nected unless they’re linked by a color
palette and similar materials. The architect
used a neutral linen paint, cherry trim, and
porcelain stone tile throughout.

Use similar materials

to connect rooms
One way to make a small house feel larger is to unify
spaces with a consistent use of materials, colors,
and detailing. I knew the house needed a personal-
ity or character that could be repeated throughout,
because if you make each space in a small house Master
bedroom
different, the house will feel even smaller. I created a
Dining area
palette for the trim, tile, flooring, walls, and coun-
tertops that I could carry throughout. We trimmed
around the doors, windows, and base of the wall Kitchen
Living
with cherry and also used it for a number of the room Bedroom
built-ins. To save money, we used cherry-looking
melamine for the shelves in the quilting studio. We
used hardwood veneer flooring in the living room,
Entry
the hallway, and the quilting studio.
Throughout the house, wherever we put tile it was North
uniformly applied. It’s all porcelain stone, but the Quilting
studio
horizontal, or floor, tiles are one color, whereas the 0 2 4 8 ft.
tiles on vertical surfaces, such as surrounding the Scale in feet
fireplace in the living room, are another. Tying it all
together is white linen paint, which makes the house
feel light and airy. Few Materials, Used Wisely
Glass is another detail used throughout the house. Porcelain stone tile was used in the entry,
kitchen, dining area, and baths, wherever the
Glass doors and windows that go down to the floor floors were likely to see traffic—and spills.
not only extend the interior space, but also connect
Both bedrooms were carpeted for warmth and
rooms by framing the spectacular views. comfort. Although private, they are still a part of
the house, so a ribbon of tile was added to the
You can do more, experiment, and take chances outer edges of the rooms.
with a larger house, but I think that by using fewer
Hardwood was used in the living room, hallway,
materials in a variety of ways I was inspired to do and quilting studio. Note how floors do the work
of walls: Tile and hardwood suggest transitions
some creative thinking. Looking back, that is one of between the living room and the rest of the
common rooms.
the things I enjoyed most about the project.
Designing this house was an unbelievable learning Because it’s so versatile, clean, and durable,
simple laminate was selected for counters in the
experience for me. It allowed me to test some smart, kitchen, bath, and quilting studio.
space-saving strategies and stretch my imagina- Cherry built-ins give the home a warm, rich feel,
tion. I feel very lucky that I will be able to see how it but they can run up a budget, so the cubicles in
the quilting studio were made of cherry-looking
ages—gracefully, I hope—over time. melamine instead.

a p o c k e t- s i z e h o u s e t h a t l i v e s l a r g e 91
Timeless
Character By Sarah Susanka

I
instantly fell in love with this unassuming little
cottage designed by John Cole Architect and built
by Nathan R. Powell Inc. It has a simple elegance
and charm that is much harder to achieve than you
might think. Beams, columns, white walls, and
natural wood floors and ceilings express the struc-
ture without apology or embellishment. The super-
simple brackets at each of the alcoves designate these
alcoves as separate places while keeping them con-
nected with the larger rooms they participate in.
Christopher Alexander published a book called
The Linz Café in 1981, just a few years after his
paradigm-changing book A Pattern Language. A
photo at the beginning of that book reminds me of
the shot of the lovely office alcove. Indeed, the whole
house exemplifies what A Pattern Language is all
about: It has an effortless sense of place and a time-
less character that will endear itself to its inhabitants
for a long time. Although it was planned as a guest-
house and is only one phase of a larger project, I’m
willing to bet that the owners have bonded deeply
with this delightful cottage.

92 c o t t ag e s
 Comfortably sm all . The open
floor plan of the cottage makes it
feel much larger than its 900 sq. ft.
The long interior views that extend
through the oversized windows to
the Menduncook River also contrib-
ute to the airy and open feeling.

Nook s and cr annies. (above)

Office and window-seat alcoves
feel like separate areas yet barely
take up any precious floor space.

t i m e l e s s c h a r ac t e r 93
A Cottage
Fit for a Hobbit
A
sked to design a fitting repository for a cli-
ent’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien
manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter
Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that
describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.
“I came back to my client and said, ‘I’m not going
to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled,
choosing to focus instead on a finely crafted struc-
ture embodying a sense of history and tradition.
The site was critical too—and Archer found the
perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main
94 c o t t ag e s
By Debra Judge Silber
house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran
through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be
wonderful to build the structure into the wall?”
Not only did the wall anchor the cottage, but
stones from another section were used in the cot-
tage’s construction. “It literally grew out of the site,”
Archer said.
Perhaps stranger things have happened in Tolk-
ien’s world, but few houses in this one go to such
lengths to capture a fictional fantasy in the context
of architecture.
Cr aftsm anship at wor k .
David Thorngate of Premium Grade
Cabinetry Inc. fabricated the win-
dow in his Newark, Delaware, work-
shop. Made from Spanish cedar, the
window measures approximately
98 in. wide by 78 in. tall. Thorngate
used more than 30 templates to
maintain symmetry for every aspect
of the window, completing assembly
on top of a full-size template of the
window’s rough opening
a c o t t ag e f i t f o r a h o b b i t 95
 Inspir ed by liter atur e and by its site. Archer & Buchanan Architecture
Ltd. of Chester County, Pennsylvania, designed this 500-sq.-ft. cottage to house a
collection of J.R.R. Tolkien artifacts for an avid collector. Built by Richard Owens
of Chester County, the stone and timber-frame structure was inspired by
Tolkien’s writings.

96 c o t t ag e s
 The hinge is the tr ick . The round
door is hung on a single hinge designed
by blacksmith Michael Coldren of North
East, Maryland. Designing hardware
strong enough to handle the torque of
the circular door was one of the tougher
challenges, according to the architect.
The walls are plywood, trimmed out
with Douglas fir details and in-filled
with plaster. Above the plaster walls,
the roof is supported with Douglas fir
rafters and a Glulam ® ridge beam, also
trimmed with Douglas fir.

A door fit for a hobbit. Though

the round door is used as an entryway,
a more conventionally shaped (and
discreetly concealed) 3-ft. by 7-ft. door
in the back of the cottage conforms to
code and, Archer concedes, makes it
easier to get in and out. To the right of
the round door, an electrical outlet is
disguised under a metal box.

A r ea ding nook . Half-walls

and an arch create a library in
the rear of the main room.

a c o t t ag e f i t f o r a h o b b i t 97
 part 3

Small Houses

99 small-house secrets
106 big river, small house 
112 passive house perfection
120 a small, spacious house for
a skinny city lot
125 a tiny addition for a
growing family
130 a new floor plan saves
an old house
138 a better house, not a bigger one
146 build like this
154 the neighbor out back
157 a tiny traditional japanese house

98 sm a ll houses
 Small-House
By Charles Miller Secrets

I
n “The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe’s mis-
chievous observation on human nature, a stolen
correspondence with compromising information
is hidden in plain sight. After elaborate investiga-
tions have failed to find the letter, Poe’s detective
spots it pinned to the wall, where no one has both-
ered to look.
Cathy Schwabe’s cottage reminds me of this clas-
sic tale. The small house deftly combines a catalog
of design strategies that work together to make it
feel expansive without ever feeling “designy.” These
strategies are all right there in plain sight. Seasoned
architects and designers know these guidelines, but
judging from the fumbled opportunities that plague
a lot of small houses being built today, I think they’re
worth revisiting.
Like the notes in a song, these design strategies
do not exist in a vacuum. They are the building
blocks of smart small-house design, meant to work
together with the goal of creating beautiful, com-
fortable spaces that fulfill their functions and delight
their occupants. They turn up everywhere on a walk
through Cathy Schwabe’s house tucked amid the
redwoods of the California coast.

99
 Raise the ceilings
In the living space, the sloping shed roof rises to
14 ft., where clerestory windows admit north light
and provide ventilation when needed. Notice how
the light from the clerestories bounces off the
white, gypsum-board ceiling, evenly illuminating
the room.
Each of the other rooms has either a cathedral or a
sloping ceiling instead of the standard 8-ft. flat ceil-
ing. If you can’t slope a ceiling, raising it to 9 ft. also
will give a small room a surprising lift.
100 sm a ll houses
Use scale to your advantage
Exaggerated architectural elements such as the 8-ft.-
tall sliding doors and the three tall double-hung
windows in the west wall speak to generosity. It’s
hard to imagine this room with smaller windows
and doors. The vertical shapes of the frames and
glazing echo the vertical lines of the trees in the
background. The black window frames recede, em-
phasizing the view. Try to imagine them in typical
white. It doesn’t work.
 Built sm all , feels l arge. In the main
living area the oversized windows and patio
doors, the raised ceiling, and the extended
views all contribute to the large feeling of
the room.

Don’t go ov er boar d. (below) Using

subtle finishes for the cabinets and ceiling
allows the texture of the vertical-grain
paneling to stand out and make an impact.

Borrow views
The shed roof rises to the north rather than to the
south for two good reasons. First, a tall south-facing
wall would have added too much solar gain to
the room, and more important, there is a forested
watershed to the north that will remain forest. The
tall windows to the north and west take advantage
of these views, and in fact they reinforce the vertical
lines of the trees. You can see the treetops through
the clerestories.

sm a l l-house secr ets 101

 Use texture and color sparingly
The vertical-grain Douglas-fir paneling adds a sooth-
ing amber glow and vertical lines of sap and heart-
wood that reinforce the lines of the windows and tree
trunks. The crisp edges where the paneling meets the
gypsum-board ceiling emphasize the architecture.
Putting fir paneling on the ceiling would have dimin-
ished the impact. The ipé floors and maple cabinets
maple caBinets slate floor
have calm grain patterns that don’t compete with the
fir. The vermilion front door, dining table, and book-
case in the main room add an unmistakable personal
touch without going over the top.

Spend money on high-quality

materials where it counts
If you’re building a small house, you’ve already saved
some money on materials. Invest some of those
saved dollars in high-quality hardware, windows,
avonite vanity top limestone counter
doors, and elegant details. In this house, the fir
paneling, ipé flooring, custom solid-wood maple
cabinetry, and slate floors in the bath and entry are
premium finishes that express the care and thought-
fulness of the designer and builder. Focus on the
parts of the house that get plenty of attention and
living area Deck use. The limestone kitchen counter, dotted with
fossils, and its undermount stainless-steel sink with
integral drainboard are good examples of this. Out-
study
side on the patio, the herringbone weave of the cedar
bench boards where they turn the corner says that
somebody cared. There’s just no substitute.
Bedroom
Kitchen
Minimize hallways and make
entry them do double duty
A small house is no place to spend precious space
on long, narrow hallways. Instead, centrally locate
the entry hall so that rooms can pinwheel around it.
terrace
This applies to upstairs landings, too. Schwabe allo-
cates a bit of entry space for a bench, which serves
Bench
North
as a mini-mudroom for shoes below and a coatrack
above. The vermilion door and bright blue bench
0 2 4 8 ft. add a zesty note.

102 sm a ll houses
 The entry leads either to the bath, the study, or
the living space to the north, where the circulation
paths to the primary bedroom and the deck merge
with the living space, becoming comfortable spatial
boundaries between the sitting area and the kitchen/
dining area.

Create long interior views

The diagonal views across the living space are only
part of what makes the house feel spacious. The view
from the entry through the windows in the study
is another, as is the sightline from the bath right
through the window of the bedroom.

Make multipurpose rooms

The one and only bath is also the laundry room, with
a full-size front-loading washer and dryer tucked
under the lavatory counter. This strategy not only
Extended lights and views. Placing transom win-
saves space, but it also minimizes plumbing runs. dows over interior doors channels daylight and views
Likewise, the study is also the guest bedroom. deep into small spaces.

T wo-in-one. The bathroom and laundry room both

occupy the same space, a smart way to save on plumb-
ing and square footage.

sm a l l-house secr ets 103

 Br ing the outdoor s in. The homeowner has
brought sunlight in and extended the views by
including windows on all four walls of this room.

Use windows on as many

sides as possible
We humans like daylight, and when the sun is out
we gravitate toward day-lit rooms. To satisfy that
need, try to put windows on at least two sides of a
room. The great room in this house has windows
in all four walls, and a generous skylight over the
passageway from the entry hall is a silent guide that
says, “Walk this way.”
Create private outdoor spaces
Nothing amplifies the perceived size of a small
house more than a sunny outdoor space. Here, the
sloping lot required a cut in the grade to create a
level pad on the uphill side for the entry. Schwabe
saw this as an opportunity to carve out a wider pad
for a brick terrace. The retaining wall rises about 5 ft.
at its highest point. A lower retaining wall in front of
it creates a planter between the two for landscaping
that screens the neighboring house. Brackets sup-
port a yellow-cedar bench.
Just about the time that the sun passes over the
patio, it starts to light up the deck off the living
space. Tucked into the notch between the bedroom
and the living area, the deck becomes a private
outdoor retreat.

104 sm a ll houses
Br ing the indoor s out. Both the deck
off the living area and the terrace off the
front of the house extend the living area out
of doors.

SPECS
Bedrooms: 1, plus a study that
doubles as a guest room
Bathrooms: 1
Size: 800 sq. ft.
Cost: $335 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2006
Location: Gualala, California
Architect: Cathy Schwabe
Builder: Chuck Arana,
Marine View Construction

sm a l l-house secr ets 105

Big River,
Small House
O
n a typical morning the closest traffic
passing by Michael and Charlotte Green’s
house is a brood of ducks paddling toward
Ross Island to forage. Michael and Charlotte live on
the Willamette River—literally.
After raising a family on Bainbridge Island,
Washington, the Greens decided to try something
completely different. Following their discovery of a
tightly knit little community of houseboaters on the
outskirts of Portland, Oregon, they concluded that
life on the water promised a closer connection to the
natural world, freshwater breezes, and constantly
changing daylight bouncing off the water.
Their part of the community’s dock includes
anchorage for two vessels, one on each side of the
dock. The main house, which will be about 2,150 sq.
ft., will occupy the channel-side mooring. The guest-
house shown here is tied up on the riverbank side.
The houseboat marina is in a part of town that has
industrial buildings and warehouses scattered along
the shore. We followed that lead with finishes that
range from simple to rustic. Painted cedar siding,
aluminum windows, and a galvanized-metal roof
echo the local decor. Inside, birch-plywood built-ins,
a galvanized-steel kitchen counter, and rough-sawn
fir floors continue this straightforward tone. In a
106 sm a ll houses
By Russell Hamlet
nod to the rippling surface of the river, corrugated-
steel panels play across the ceiling.
The Greens and I had to work with the marina’s
stringent guest-house rules, which restrict the size
of the float that supports the house to no more than
18 ft. by 34 ft., with a maximum height of 15 ft. 6 in.
above the water line. The fire department requires
access on all sides of a structure, and with the inclu-
sion of an exterior deck, we had a scant 14 ft. 9 in. by
22 ft. 6 in. for the home’s footprint. That’s not much
room for a house with a kitchen, a bathroom, a din-
ing area, a sitting space, and a sleeping loft.
Still, I really enjoy the challenge of designing a
house that packs a lot of function and style into
a minimum amount of space. This house utilizes
nine strategies that can inject maximum utility and
character into a small house. You can find multiple
examples in each of the photos shown here.
1. Include an outdoor room
Bordered by the house and the kayak rack, this little
deck (see the photo on the facing page) has definite
boundaries that give it a roomlike sense of enclo-
sure. It simultaneously adds living space and extends
the views from inside.
 0 2 4 8 ft.

Kayak rack
North

Entry Kitchen

Dining Sleeping
booth loft above

SPECS
Bedrooms: 1
Bathrooms: 1 Desk
Size: 433 sq. ft. Outdoor
Cost: $320 per sq. ft. space
(doesn’t include float)
Completed: 2008 A Shipshape Plan for Dockside Living
Location: Portland, Oregon
Architect: Russell Hamlet It’s pretty much one room, but divided into distinct zones by
Builder: Even Construction partitions and built-ins, this little house generously serves
multiple functions without wasting a square foot.

big r iver , sm a ll house 107

 Extend the space. Lots of natural light,
expansive views, and vaulted ceilings combine
to create a space that feels much larger than
its 433 sq. ft.

108 sm a ll houses
2. Organize the house into zones
Drawing distinctions between different parts of
the house based on their function will create the
impression of multiple rooms. You can do this with
built-ins, ceiling-height and floor-level changes, or
different finishes. Although no doors separate them,
this house has distinct zones for entry transition,
kitchen, dining area, living space, office, and
sleeping loft.

3. Include multi-purpose rooms

The living-area couch pulls out to double as a
guest bed.

4. Create long views in all

directions
Open it up. Skylights allow daylight in and can keep a
We used windows on at least two sides of each zone small space from feeling crowded.
to provide views and daylight. This variety invites
unconfined eye-wandering to stretch the space.
Sm art built-ins. The booth provides a built-in
dining area and also helps to define the space.
5. Use contrasts in light and color
Light colors on walls and ceilings give a room an
open feeling, and sources of daylight at the end of
a room draw the eye, expanding the sense of space.
During the day the corrugated-metal ceiling con-
stantly changes with the angle of the sun. At night
spotlights play across the rippling surfaces, empha-
sizing the high ceiling.

6. Make the space feel tall

High windows, skylights, the vaulted ceiling, and
the open ship’s ladder all promote long views to
the skyline.

7. Use thick edges and built-ins

Thick edges, such as the partition wall in the loft,
give the impression of strength and durability—a
good trait in any house. Built-ins, such as the dining
booth and the red storage cabinet, always make the
most of their space, and they can serve as boundar-
ies that define specific zones.

big r iver , sm a ll house 109

 8. Make some things big
The oversize window in the living room evokes a
sense of grandeur. In the bath, the 3-ft. by 5-ft. skylit
shower (see the photo below) isn’t huge, but it’s far
more generous than the typical elbow-squeezed
stalls often found in tiny houses.

9. Invest space in transitions

The sheltered outdoor closet and tiny vestibule just
a foundation inside the door impart a sense of passage from out-
that floats side to indoors. It’s a subtle but important element
that implies a larger structure. The 6-ft.-tall parti-
tion between the door and the galley kitchen is both
At a time w hen it looked like the surround- display space and storage on the kitchen side.
ing forests were infinite, Oregonians built their
houseboats atop raftlike floats made of choice logs.
Times have changed. Today, there are two good
reasons to take a different approach to building a
float for a houseboat: Good logs are getting harder
to find, and the logs will eventually need replacing
as they rot along the waterline.
The state-of-the-art float supporting the Greens’
guesthouse is made of 4-ft.-thick expanded-
polystyrene blocks encased in an 8-in.-thick shell
of reinforced concrete. Unlike log floats, concrete
floats are engineered specifically for the structure
they will carry. And unlike log floats, they require
little to no maintenance and should last at least
80 to 100 years.
Channels carved into the foam blocks accommo-
date plumbing and electrical lines and exit the shell
at hookup locations on the sides of the float. The
topping slab includes a 6-in.-wide stemwall with
anchor bolts for tying the building’s walls to the
float. Point loads such as columns bear on concrete
piers that go in holes hogged out of the foam
where necessary.
Smaller floats like this one often have “ballast
tanks” for adjusting the height of the float. These
are basically air pockets that are constructed under
the float. The guest-house float has four ballast Spacious show er . The shower is larger than
tanks, one at each corner. Adding some pressurized you would normally find in a small house, making
air to a ballast tank lifts the corner; releasing the air for a more luxurious feeling bathroom.
drops it back down.
Don’t forget the tr ansitions. (facing page)
This float measures 34 ft. by 18 ft., and cost The tall partition wall not only provides much
$43,000. At $70 per sq. ft., that’s an expensive needed kitchen storage space; it also creates a
foundation. But it responds to a demand rarely transition space at the entry.
made of other foundations: Be strong, stable, and
lighter than water.

110 sm a ll houses
a big lit tle house on the r idge 111
Passive House
Perfection
A
fter both growing up in California, Mica
and Laureen lived together in many other
places throughout their busy careers. Their
hearts have always been on the West Coast, though,
and they longed to return one day. They eventu-
ally found a small piece of property in the coastal
enclave of Carmel-by-the Sea on the Monterey
Peninsula, and they hired me as architect and Rob
Nicely of Carmel Building & Design as builder for
a new house that will one day be their permanent
home. The collaboration yielded a new type of house
for this area, one that appropriately breaks free of
the local vernacular while also meeting the country’s
most aggressive performance benchmarks.
This Passive House is a first for Rob, for me, and
for the city of Carmel. Working on this project
has confirmed for Rob and me the importance of
sustainable, high-performance design and building.
For the city and for those who now get to experience
this home, I hope the house evokes a realization that
design and performance can be held to the same
very high standard and that beautiful, exceptionally
low-energy homes are within our collective reach.
A fear of passive house
One of the initial challenges with our project
was providing Mica and Laureen with the house
112 sm a ll houses
By Justin Pauly
that they wanted while also convincing Carmel’s
strict planning commission that the project would
complement the existing city fabric. When we first
sent the project to the commission, we were so ex-
cited about the idea of building Carmel’s first Passive
House that we included a Passive House brochure.
Unfortunately, that decision had the opposite effect
of what we hoped. Instead of getting people excited
about our project, it scared them into thinking that
we were going to build a box with a wall of south-
facing glass and few other openings. Although this
design might be true of some Passive Houses, our
plans called for a different home. Mica and Laureen
wanted a contemporary farmhouse with a clean,
crisp, and inviting exterior and an interior with an
open floor plan that would use a series of outdoor
spaces to create a strong relationship with the small
yet dramatic site. Fortunately, the commission was
able to see that vision, and our plans were approved.
Working around the redwoods
The lot is a 4,000-sq.-ft. flag-shaped parcel hemmed
in on three sides by existing homes and on the
fourth side by a cluster of massive redwood trees.
These redwoods are the dominant feature on the
property and became the inspiration for many of the
house’s design decisions.
pa s s i v e h o u s e p e r f e c t i o n 113
 Mudroom
Evoking Comfort
Office nook
in an opEn pLan
Garage
the floor plan has carefully designed
Kitchen spaces for gathering and retreat. the core
of the plan is the vaulted dining room,
which brings people together in the heart
of the home. More intimate spaces branch
off this central space, and are enriched
Dining with elements that make them inviting
and comfortable.
Patio

Fireplace

entry
North
living Master
SpECS bedroom
up
Guest
Bedrooms: 2 suite
Bathrooms: 21⁄ 2
Size: 1,600 sq. ft. Dn
Cost: $425 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2012
Location: Carmel, California Second floor
architect: Justin Pauly,
www.justinpaulyarchitects.com
Builder: rob Nicely, first floor 0 4 8
www.carmelbuilding.com 16 ft.

center stage. With its dramatic vaulted ceiling and massive timbered fan trusses, the dining
area occupies the middle of the house. A large bay window fl oods the space with light from
the south, while French doors open the house to the redwoods and patio to the north.

114 sm a ll houses
 K itchen. Light green cabinets topped with
polished white macaubas quartzite, not
marble, sit in front of a subway-tile back-
splash to create a bright, durable space for
cooking and entertaining.

The lot’s physical and regulatory constraints led

us to position most of the house at the rear of the
property, with a small single-car garage placed at the
street. The garage is linked to the house via a nar-
row, covered breezeway that steps down slightly to
accommodate a subtle change in topography across
the site. We placed a small courtyard directly behind
the redwood trees and in front of the main living
space, and a more private outdoor area directly to
the south of the main living space at the rear of the
property. The garage and breezeway give the prop-
erty a “compound” feel, whereas the outdoor areas
tie the interior spaces to the exterior site and help to
give the compact house a needed sense of openness.

Open spaces and intimate places

In addition to well-connected indoor and outdoor
spaces, Mica and Laureen also requested a well-
designed kitchen with a large open space nearby
for entertaining and smaller, more intimate spaces
for relaxing and reading. The compact kitchen and
mudroom lie to the north of the dining room; to
the south are a small sitting room, a powder room,
a master bedroom, and stairs to the second-floor
suite. Whereas the vaulted dining room, with large
openings to the north and south, lends the house a
sense of grandeur, all of the other rooms have a more
intimate feel because of their smaller footprint and
warm, natural finishes.

A twist on a traditional style

Many of the interior and exterior spaces include tra-
ditional elements rendered in more modern detail.
Inside, a palette of exposed whitewashed rough-
sawn Douglas-fir framing, integral colored plaster,
Half-bath . With a Duravit® sink atop a custom wal-
and floorboards made of reclaimed barn wood adds nut stand set under a Troy® pendant, even the bright,
to the warmth of the spaces. Board-and-batten airy half-bath off the living room reinforces elegant
farmhouse simplicity.
detailing on the upper portion of the fireplace and

pa s s i v e h o u s e p e r f e c t i o n 115
 a large sliding barn door in the upstairs bedroom
continue to reinforce the farmhouse aesthetic.
We covered the exterior in white board-and-
batten siding that sits atop a continuous water table,
with lap siding below to offer a sense of grounding to
the home’s base. We chose standing-seam zinc-coated
metal for the roof, with clear cedar trim for the
fascia and underside of the eaves. This boxed-in eave
116 sm a ll houses
detail gives the whole lid the clean feel of a separate
element that has been dropped neatly onto the home
below. In addition, the large cedar sliding barn doors
and the exaggerated scale of the foursquare window
at the stairwell on the north elevation are promi-
nent elements that push the house’s style toward the
contemporary.

Slashing energy use
The Passive House approach to building hinges on
minimizing the amount of energy consumed in a
home by providing extremely high levels of insula-
tion and minimizing air leakage. Unlike other rating
systems and certification programs, Passive House
tends to focus wholly on energy consumption, which
has long been a concern for Rob and me.
Guest suite. In the small bedroom
a sliding barn door with an operable
window helps to define the home’s
farmhouse style and creates privacy at
the top of the stairs.
Living room . The living room sits
beneath a whitewashed Douglas-fir ceil-
ing and before whitewashed Douglas-fir
plank walls and custom built-ins. Sepa-
rated from the grand dining space by
only a double-sided fireplace, the living
room is very much connected to the hub
of the house, while affording respite
from the activity within it.
Several design strategies helped the house to
achieve its performance goals. The compact foot-
print is a key attribute of a super-low-energy
building. Furthermore, we maximized the amount
of solar gain in the main living areas of the house
through generous amounts of southern glazing. Pas-
sive Houses tend to minimize the amount of glazing
on their north sides, which typically bleed energy
pa s s i v e h o u s e p e r f e c t i o n 117
 Roof
Standing-seam
zinc roof
#30 roofing felt
(two layers)
⁄ -in. plywood
58

Open-cell spray foam

⁄ -in.
34

2×4s at 24 in. on plywood

center to ridge spacer

⁄ -in. plywood
12

Foundation
Open-cell
spray foam
4×4 mudsill
Foam gasket

Copper flashing

2-in. rigid
insulation
3×10
Waterproofing pressure-
membrane treated
ledger

Components for conservation.

This home consumes as little energy
as possible and holds onto that energy
for as long as possible through a well-
designed envelope. All of the major
components have been detailed to
ensure optimum performance while
being practical to build.

118 sm a ll houses
 without providing any positive solar gain. In the
case of this house, however, eliminating windows
and doors on the north side would have changed the
entire look and feel of the house.
Fortunately, we were able to compensate for the
large glazed openings to the north by using more
insulation in the walls and roof. A combination of
advanced-framing techniques and what we consider
a “dual-skinned” construction approach to the roof
and walls gave us a well-insulated envelope and en-
abled us to hit our blower-door targets. If the house
performs as modeled, it will use approximately
15 percent to 20 percent of the energy consumed by
Window a code-built house.
Triple-glazed
Our mechanical system is comprised of a
window
Solid pan flashing
®
Zehnder heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) that serves
two purposes. First, it provides a continuous flow
Sill sloped to of fresh air into the house. Second, it uses warm
drain at top
edge and kerfed indoor air to preheat fresh makeup air through a
at bottom edge
heat-exchange core to minimize overall heat losses.
1× trim
A hydronic coil added to the HRV serves as a backup
heating element. With the obvious exception of
1×6 lap certain duct runs, the entire mechanical system lives
siding
in a fairly conventional crawlspace under the house.
This design detail meant that we had to forgo a
concrete slab, which is often used in Passive Houses
to store solar energy. As an alternative, we incorpo-
rated phase-change materials (PCMs) into the wall
assemblies on the south side of the house to serve as
Wall
a thermal heat sink. PCMs help to regulate indoor
temperatures by absorbing excess heat during the
2×4 studs
day and slowly releasing the heat in the evenings,
Open-cell
spray foam when the interior temperature dips below the 73°F
Fluid-applied set point. PCMs simply install as sheets behind the
weather barrier
drywall of the interior walls.
⁄ -in. drainage
14

plane Other than the use of PCMs, the construction of

11⁄2 -in. polyiso this house was intentionally straightforward. I hope
rigid foam
⁄ -in. plywood
58 that many of the design and construction techniques
21⁄4 -in.-wide we used will become mainstream in the years ahead
battens
and that high-performance houses such as this will
become synonymous with high-end construction.

pa s s i v e h o u s e p e r f e c t i o n 119
120 sm a ll houses
 A Small, Spacious
House for a
Skinny City Lot
By
Roxana Vargas-Greenan
and Trent Greenan

First floor Second floor

A
Breakfast
Bedroom SPECS
s an architect and an urban designer, we nook
Bedrooms: 3
like fitting more into a design than there d Bathrooms: 21⁄2
Size: 1,500 sq. ft. (lot size
seems to be space for. When we learned the c 25 ft. by 100 ft.)
Kitchen
city of Portland, Oregon, was having a design com- Cost: $100 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2007
petition for a narrow urban infill house, we jumped Location: Portland, Oregon
Architect: Vargas Greenan
at the chance. Portland wanted plans for so-called Dining area Architecture-Civic Design
Bedroom Builders: Jack Wagnon of
skinny lots (25 ft. wide by 100 ft. deep) around the b Prairie View Homes and
city. The impetus for the design competition was to Randall Palazzo of Palazzo
Custom Homes
create a narrow house with curb appeal. Our entry
Living Open to
could be no wider than 15 ft., yet include a garage. room below
Photos taken at
For livability and marketability, we wanted the lettered positions.
design to have at least three bedrooms and large liv- Up
North
ing spaces. It was important for the design elements Dn

to reflect the historic architecture of the Portland

area. We wanted the interior to be comfortable and 0 2 4 8 ft.

uncompromised by the narrowness of the house.

Out of more than 400 entries submitted from
Garage
around the world, our design won a People’s Choice Entry Master
Award, and our entry was one of two designs the bedroom

city chose to offer as permit-ready plans.

Attractive street frontage a

was the big challenge
At 15 ft. wide, a house has barely enough room for a
front door and a garage. We had to include a street-
facing garage door because Portland blocks don’t
have alleys and because the city required the designs
Appeal of a Compact Design
Less square footage benefits the occupants and the builder.
Rooms are clustered around high-use areas like the kitchen and
the bathrooms. The double height of the living room and its
squarish shape provide a central focus. Builder Jack Wagnon likes
the centralized plumbing and stacked wall locations for efficiency
in building.

121
 Let in the light. The open two-story core
of the house serves to connect the different
living zones while allowing light to penetrate
fully. Photo taken at B on floor plan.

122 sm a ll houses
 K itchen is close but separ ate. The
cooking is centralized, but a structural wall
blocks the rest of the house from clutter and
noise. The breakfast nook at the back of the
house is open to the kitchen. Photos taken
at D and C on floor plan.

to accommodate parking. A garage, however, is not

necessarily the most-attractive element to see from
the street.
To reduce the garage’s prominence and to cre-
ate an inviting entry, we added a small porch. This
approach offers two advantages. First, it shortens the
narrow hallway required to move beyond the depth
of the garage when entering the house. It also creates
a transitional space for people to pause as they move
from the public street to the private home.
We de-emphasized the garage by reducing the
size of the door from the standard 8 ft. by 8 ft. to a
special-order 7 ft. by 7 ft. In addition, we designed a
custom garage door with large windows to help the
front of the house feel occupied.
Above the garage, the master-bedroom windows
look out to the street. For visual interest, we cre-
ated a French balcony with cedar 4×4s supporting
a shed roof that interrupts the larger roof plane (see
the photo p. 120, taken at A on floor plan). These
features give the building a welcoming appearance.

We used the narrow footprint to

our advantage
It would be easy for a narrow house to feel cramped.
However, we wanted to create the opposite effect by
emphasizing the strengths of a narrow design. First,
in a narrow house, window light easily penetrates
to the core. In this design we increased that advan-
tage by creating a two-story living room. Here, the
windows extend all the way to the eave. This lets in
more sunlight throughout the year, which is a big
benefit in the Pacific Northwest, where winters can
be cloudy. The height also allows light to penetrate
beyond the living spaces into the hallways, which
gives the interior a sense of openness.
The vaulted living room also breaks up the linear
feel of the house and links different living areas. The
master bedroom in front and smaller bedrooms in
back are joined by a bridge-like corridor that main-
tains the bedrooms’ privacy but creates a connection
to the lower living spaces.
This plan allows for flexibility. The gathering
space downstairs can be expanded beyond the liv-
ing room onto the stairs and into the second-floor
hallway as needed during parties. The advantage is
that you can incorporate circulation space, which
otherwise would be wasted, into active living space.
Downstairs, the vaulted room gives the small house
a surprising sense of grandeur.

a s m a l l , s pa c i o u s h o u s e f o r a s k i n n y c i t y l o t 123
 shear-wall panels allow
for an open interior
Providing adequate shear-wall
protection is challenging in a
long, narrow two-story house
with many wall openings.
The key to success was using
Simpson’s® manufactured
Strong-Wall® Shearwall panels
(www.strongtie.com). Panels
are available from 15 in. to
A centrally
24 in. wide and, depending
located shear
on the structural needs, are panel allows for
made with either wood or the two-story open
core. Three more
metal webbing that provides Strong-Walls of this
shear support. A total of six type (not shown) were
incorporated into the
Strong-Wall panels were used rear wall of the house.
in this house.

Connected to the foundation This metal Strong-Wall is bolted

with 1-in.-dia. steel rods, a directly to the footing. It secures
second-floor Strong-Wall the corner yet leaves room for the
secures the structure against garage-door opening. At only
the seismic and wind-shear 18 in. wide, it replaces a 4-ft.-wide
loads that a tall, skinny traditionally framed shear wall
building might encounter. (OSB fastened to studs).

Affordability Is a balancing act we reduced the floor-to-window ratio to less than

We want our designs to be affordable, but strip-
ping a house to its basics would not help the city to
establish attractive urban infill. To retain important
details, we prioritized design elements. Outside, the
most important elements are the recessed windows,
the French balcony, and the wooden garage door
with windows. In addition, we recommend high-
quality environmentally friendly paints and finishes,
an open floor plan, and a double-height living room.
To reduce energy costs and to be certified by the
local green-building body (www.earthadvantage.org),
25 percent. In addition, we increased the floor joists
from 2×8s to 2×10s to get R-38 insulation under the
house. In the attic, we achieved R-49 and R-38 in the
areas with scissors trusses.
We made some compromises to reduce costs.
For example, we re-engineered the foundation to
reduce the volume of concrete used. We provided
options for fixed instead of operable windows. We
also repeated window configurations when possible
and found affordable window and door options that
matched our design standards.

124 sm a ll houses
 A Tiny Addition for
By Tina Govan a Growing Family

M
y husband and I moved into our 1923
bungalow in downtown Raleigh, North
Carolina, as a young couple. Ten years,
two children, and one dog later, the house had
become cramped. Having lived in Japan, we were
accustomed to tight quarters, but the constraints of
1,000 sq. ft. had become too great, especially with
the added demands of my home office. We chose
to add on to our home instead of moving and had
a lot of needs to accommodate, but not a lot of
space to do it.
For two years, I worked as an architect in Japan
and admired how the Japanese were able to intro-
duce a sense of expansiveness within the smallest
of structures. It was through my observations there
that I developed many of my own design ideas. With
a strong reliance on those strategies, I approached The main common room, or plaza, of the addition
the challenge of designing our tiny addition. needed to serve a wide range of functions. To keep
the area open and to avoid separate rooms for each
Soft spatial boundaries allow use, I created small but distinctive spaces along the
multiuse spaces edges of a high central living area.
Using changes in ceiling height, floor level, or mate- One corner of the addition provides a dining
rials; using partial or sliding walls rather than solid, space surrounded by a bank of windows, whereas
full-height ones; using pocket doors rather than the other accommodates my home office. The tatami
swinging doors; and carving niches within larger room (our new bedroom) is raised several steps
spaces are all strategies I used for distinguishing above the main living area. Tucked into another
spaces in a softer way. corner is a stacked washer/dryer unit that is hidden

125
 Fr ee-flow ing and fu nctional . The addition is
not defined by rooms and walls, but by open spaces
that serve a variety of tasks. Southern yellow pine adds
rich trim details throughout, while a roof comprised of
rigid-foam insulation, A/C plywood, and cable collar
ties helps to keep the bones of the structure in focus.
Photo taken at B. Photo on p. 125 taken at A.

126 sm a ll houses
 Operable clerestory window
attic access
loft/study area
Dining
home office space

laundry nook

Master
bathroom

e
us
ho
g
in
is t
ex
n
tio
North

di
ad
Original entry
sauna house

hot tub

Fishpond
Plaza

tatami room/ tatami

master bedroom house D B
C
traditional engawa/deck
E

JapanESE ConCEptS yiELD a uniQuE DESign

i wanted to add on to our home in a way that would maintain
the integrity of the original bungalow and honor the memory of f
our much-used backyard patio, which would be lost to the new
construction. the overall concept for the addition developed as
a kind of plaza, with two houses facing into it: the tatami house
and the original house, each covered in exterior siding, giving an
indoor/outdoor quality to the space between them. a

Photos taken at
lettered positions.
behind a sliding plywood panel held in place with a
simple wooden peg. A counter and hamper sit op- 0 8 16 32 ft.

posite. This design allows the laundry area to coexist

with more-public spaces and also saves valuable
square footage.
Another example of this kind of space is the loft,
which wraps two sides of the plaza. It allows us to
inhabit the high volume of the room and serves as
a private getaway with a small library and its own
view of life below.
Softer boundaries also affect the family dynamic.
By designing one common space with smaller spaces
carved within it, we can be together as a family yet
remain comfortably separate, engaged in different
activities.
Flexibility and long views
make the house work
In a continued effort to keep the house open, I was
faced with a huge dilemma: How could I add a pri-
vate master bedroom and bathroom to the back of
the house without blocking views, light, and access
to the backyard? I wondered if a space could be both
public and private.
Again, drawing from my experience in Japan, I
chose to loosen the idea of “bedroom” and treat it as
a space that could accommodate private use at night

a t i n y a d d i t i o n f o r a g r o w i n g fa m i ly 127
Light br ings the
space to life .
and other uses during the day. A traditional tatami
Carefully placed room offered the flexibility I wanted. Custom-made
windows draw sun-
shoji screens disappear for openness or slide out
light deep into the
addition, illuminating for privacy while still allowing light to penetrate.
interior details, This room makes possible long sightlines, which
shapes, and textures.
Wherever light enters
would otherwise have been cut off by a traditional
the space, an equally bedroom. What might have been a solid box is now
valuable view extends open, providing a place for sleep, yoga, after-sauna
out. Photo taken at C
on floor plan. relaxation, or as we have discovered, a stage for our
kids. The ability to open this “private” bedroom to
other functions, as well as to sunlight, views, and
access to the outside, is absolutely essential in mak-
ing our small house feel spacious.
Similarly, the master bathroom was built along
a short hallway leading to the outdoor hot tub and
sauna. When needed, the bathroom is transformed
into a private area by sliding a frosted-glass door
out from behind the toilet. This door does double
duty as a cabinet door, covering storage shelves
above the toilet when open and allowing access to
them when shut.

Hidden storage areas increase

Br ing the outdoor s in. Large windows strengthen
the indoor/outdoor connection, while a thin window in
the dining space cleverly marks the transition between
the old house and the new addition. Photo taken at D
on floor plan
space efficiency
Keeping our addition organized is crucial. Typically,
opportunities for storage lie under stairs, under roof
eaves, above and below window seats, and in other
often-overlooked areas. By building thicker walls,
you can tuck a bookcase, a linen closet, or a stacked
washer/dryer into a hallway or niche.
In our project, I took advantage of as many stor-
age opportunities as possible. By thickening the back
wall of the tatami room I could add a built-in win-
dow seat and closet to provide storage for our bed,
which is a futon, and clothes. This built-in assembly
is below a large storage shelf that holds books and
CDs. The attic space above the tatami room, which
is accessed by a stepladder and sliding panels high
in the master bathroom, keeps sweaters, jackets,
and other winter items. Also, three large closets
sit below the much-used loft, which has given new
use and easy access to what once was a nearly
inaccessible attic.

128 sm a ll houses
Outdoor rooms increase planned windows can edit out the visual clutter of
usable square footage immediate neighbors and focus attention on selected
On our tight 50-ft. by 130-ft. city lot, efficient use of pieces of the landscape. In this way, as the Japanese
outdoor space is important. By placing a patio imme- practice, you can achieve a sense of space as well as
diately outside the common room and a wraparound privacy both inside and out, with neighbors just feet
deck (known as an engawa in Japan) outside the away. Density need not feel dense.
tatami room, doors can be flung open and interior
spaces can spill outdoors. Similarly, the bathroom
is continuous with the garden through sliding-glass
Br eak ing the
doors and a concrete wall that extends out. bar r ier bet w een
By building a fence that surrounds the house we indoor and ou t-
door spaces. The
were able to define outdoor living “rooms.” Para-
tatami room’s three
doxically, this fence makes the yard feel larger rather doors open to the
than smaller and allowed us to create intimate gar- deck and patio,
expanding the room’s
dens between the house and the property border. feel. Photo taken at F
In the same way that fences can create a private on floor plan.
oasis in the midst of a dense neighborhood, carefully

Connected but separ ate. Along with matching

French doors, the large windows of the main living
space offer a nearly uninterrupted view of the patio,
fishpond, and yard. Clerestory windows in each gable
cast a blanket of light and provide views of treetops
near and far. Photo taken at E on floor plan.

a big lit tle house on the r idge 129

 Good bones. The original house (facing page)
had plenty of appealing features but an addition
was necessary to accommodate all the home-
owners were looking for. Photo taken at A on
floor plan. Before photo taken at B.

130 sm a ll houses
 A New
Floor Plan Saves
By Parker Platt an Old House

B
revard is a small town nestled in the moun- the general layout of the main house was good, but
tains of western North Carolina. It was devel- it lacked adequate storage, comfortable bathroom
oped around a combination of industry and space, a modern kitchen, and the general amenities
tourism, and today it’s a thriving community rich in and functional areas a modern lifestyle demands.
outdoor recreation and the arts. The revitalization of this house was an exploration
Our home is in the Railroad Avenue district, the in space planning. We removed, moved, and added
neighborhood developed around the town’s depot, walls to carve out better spaces within the old foot-
originally home to essential businesses such as a print. When our design goals exceeded the capacity
livery, an icehouse, a cotton mill, and a lumber com- of the old structure—as was the case with our desire
pany. The houses built in this area were a mixture of for a master suite, for instance—we added on.
merchants’ homes and boardinghouses that served The changes we made to our home are not neces-
visitors arriving from the depot. sarily bungalow specific. Many houses share similar
Our Craftsman-style bungalow was built in attributes, and they need similar design improve-
1910, and a small boardinghouse was added to the ments to make them practical, comfortable, and
property a few years after that. When we purchased pleasing places to live.
both houses in 2009 they had been abandoned for
years. We bought our houses as part of a collection
of seven abandoned houses. All have been or are
currently being renovated, as the neighborhood has
become the focus of public and private revitalization
planning and investment.
There is a lot we like about our old houses. They
are small and well built. The detailing is simple but
strong. As we found them, the houses were shells
with great maple floors, 10-ft.-tall ceilings, large
windows and doors, and elegant trim and mold-
ing details that we’ve largely kept intact. Overall,

131
 BEforE anD aftEr:
2 thrEE arEaS of improvEmEnt
Bath When redesigning the main house, the author
focused on three primary living spaces: the kitchen,
the bathrooms, and general storage areas. Nearly all
the upgrades could be accommodated in the original
footprint, but the house needed an addition to make
it really work.
1
Kitchen
SpECS
Bedrooms: main house, 2; guesthouse, 1
Bathrooms: main house, 2; guesthouse, 1
Size: main house, 1,488 sq. ft.;
guesthouse, 648 sq. ft.
Cost: $150 per sq. ft.
Completed: 2010
B Location: Brevard, North Carolina
3 architect: Parker Platt
Builder: anthony randolph
storage

Photos taken at
Before lettered positions.
entry

North
Connect the kitchen
Older houses are often well proportioned with
comfortably sized rooms, tall ceilings, and large
windows that provide plenty of light and air
circulation—important qualities in the days before
Pantry
air-conditioning. However, rooms are often discon-
E nected from each other and don’t allow for the open
Master Kitchen living spaces desirable today.
bedroom
Kitchens, for example, were isolated rooms with
laundry
C ever-changing storage options and appliances. In
Dining
1910 there may or may not have been running water
room in our kitchen, and it likely had a wood-burning
cookstove placed in a corner. The kitchen had been
D
updated over the years. The work wasn’t always well
done, though, and the space was never fully mod-
living ernized. With a couple of simple design changes
Bedroom room
between our kitchen and dining space, we opened
the house from the front porch to the kitchen and
back door. The spaces—living, dining, and kitchen—
after entry
are clearly defined, but they remain open and con-
nected. All our public spaces now “live together,”
0 2 4 8 ft. our kitchen is functional and comfortable, and our
house feels a little bit larger.
a

132 sm a ll houses
1 opEn thE kitChEn anD
aDD StoragE
at some point a pass-through was created in the
wall separating the kitchen and the dining room.
Now a peninsula separates the two spaces; its
raised bar topped with reclaimed oak provides
a gathering and serving area. a new pantry
between the back door and the kitchen catches
groceries as they come in from the car, and a
reclaimed-oak desk beside the refrigerator
serves as command central for the house.

this wall was
removed to open
sightlines through
adjacent spaces.
Pantry increases
function and
decreases clutter
in the kitchen.

Foyer improves
connection between
the kitchen, the
backyard, and
parking.

openeD up anD moDer niZeD. The

kitchen was fully modernized and walls
were removed to increase its size and
Walls were removed open it up to the rest of the house.
to increase the size Photo taken at C on fl oor plan.
of the kitchen.

a n e w f l o o r p l a n s av e s a n o l d h o u s e 133
 Upgrade the bathrooms
Old houses never have accommodating bathrooms
by today’s standards. It’s not uncommon to find a
50- to 75-year-old, four- to five-bedroom house with
a single bathroom; a whole family commonly shared
a single bath. Although every house should have at
least one tub for bathing kids and for other occa-
sional needs, most of us now prefer to shower.
By fully renovating our existing bath in the simple
style of the house, we got a comfortable guest bath-
room that has a tub and that is open to the hall. We
added a private second bath with a large shower off
our bedroom as part of an addition packed full of
function.
cr eativ e Daylighting. The
addition that includes the master
bath is 26 ft. wide. This will allow
the easy addition of a car shelter in
the future. For that reason, there
are no windows on the back wall.
To get daylight into this space,
a window was included in the
toilet room and over the vanity a
skylight was added that fl oods the
center of the bathroom with light.
Photo taken at E on fl oor plan.

61⁄2 -ft.-wide
vanity
4-ft. by 7-ft. his
and hers closets

2 a Smart aDDition
inCLuDES a maStEr Bath
the 364-sq.-ft. addition we added to
the back of the house provided us with
a covered back entry, a storage room 3-ft. by 6-ft. shower
with outdoor access, a pantry, two walk- with seat, rain shower,
in closets, and a comfortable master and hand shower
bathroom accessed from the bedroom.

134 sm a ll houses
a big lit tle house on the r idge 135

solid wall accommodates
built-in cabinetry flanking
the fireplace.
3 CLoSEtS improvE Comfort
Dead space in the dining
room became a hallway When it came to improving storage, creative use of existing
closet by moving walls. floor space was critical. the walls between the dining room
and bathroom were drastically rearranged to make way for
two closets and a laundry room.

unused floor space in the
bathroom was captured
for laundry duty with
two new walls.
Increase storage
Beyond chopped-up floor plans and inadequate
bathroom spaces, older houses lack the kind of stor-
age we now find necessary. Somehow people man-
aged to leave their houses well dressed and pressed
every day with a fraction of the closet space we now
expect. As part of our small addition, we also added
an outdoor storage room, a pantry, and two walk-in
closets. We made small internal changes to our floor
plan as well to add a closet in the guest room and
a coat closet in the hall. We also created a laundry
space that improved the functionality of the house.
Old houses didn’t have the mechanical systems
necessary in modern homes, and those mechanical
systems need a place to live. Fortunately, we were
able to place mechanicals so that they didn’t deprive
us of valuable floor space. We used a geothermal
HVAC system to condition the main house by

136 sm a ll houses
Built-ins a dd stor age. (facing page) Subtle
changes were made in the wall between the
guest bedroom and the living room to enable the missing link
the addition of a closet on the private side of the
wall and built-in cabinet space on the public side.
Photo taken at D on floor plan.
The sm all w hite house added to the
property around 1915 was close to the back
of our main house, which sits where it was
running pipes in trenches in the yard. This system originally built on the half-acre lot. The small
doesn’t require an outdoor unit. The indoor unit is house’s location didn’t allow for the addition
in the attic. Our water heater is in a partial basement we had imagined, and it blocked the main
house from access to and views of the large
under our master bedroom.
backyard. We moved the small structure (see
the top photo below) to the rear of the site
A home worth preserving and converted it to a guesthouse that would
Large numbers of beautiful old houses built from perfectly accommodate my wife’s parents, who
come for extended stays from Switzerland.
the late 1800s through the 1940s line the streets of
The guesthouse was a blank slate when we
central neighborhoods close to the activity of town. bought it. Ultimately, we changed it from a
Empty lots in such places are hard to come by. Older two-bedroom house with a small living space
homes also have elements you don’t readily find in to a one-bedroom cottage with a combined
new houses: built-up trim details and classic man- kitchen and living area and a large covered
front porch.
tels, hardwood floors, and solid old-growth framing.
The cottage makes good use of our entire
Homebuilders of old regularly relied on plan and lot and relieves some of the demand that
detail books published by architects and designers, would otherwise be placed on our small home.
and they developed a good sense of proportion
and quality.
An old house has stories that can be as interesting
as the house itself. At the closing, our attorney told
us that he used to spend time in the main house as a
child with his friend John Huggins. After we reno-
vated the house, we were invited to speak to the local
historical society about our efforts in the neighbor-
hood. John Huggins was in the audience that night
and approached us after we spoke. He let us know
that he was happy with what we had done with the
place. John, now in his late 70s, told us that he was
born in our house and that he and his wife spent
their wedding night and first year of marriage in the
guesthouse now used by my in-laws.
As an architect with a residential focus, I am
aware of cost and quality in new construction proj-
ects. When we took stock of our renovation, it was
clear that for the amount we invested we could not
have achieved the location or the quality of home
if we had built new. Perhaps just as important, we
wouldn’t have helped to preserve such a rich local
history.

a n e w f l o o r p l a n s av e s a n o l d h o u s e 137
138 sm a ll houses
 A Better House,
By Sigrid Simonson Not a Bigger One

W ith the friendly face of a suntanned

surfer, our contractor, Tony Hunter,
looks approachable. That might
explain why so many total strangers felt free to offer
their opinions about the one-story house he was
canals. As a result, some of the funky charm that
characterized our neighborhood is being lost.
We moved here several years ago, into a 680-sq.-ft.
former rental home not much larger than a double-
wide trailer. It not only was small, it felt small. It
building for my husband, Bob Manwaring, and me. wasn’t long before we—like our neighbors—started
“Where is the second story?” and “Are they crazy?” planning to replace the house with one better suited
were two common queries Tony fielded on an almost to comfortable year-round living.
daily basis during the construction phase.
No one can remember the last time a permit was
issued for a one-story house in our neighborhood.
We live in a small island community in southern
California, where the typical lot size is 30 ft. wide by
80 ft. long. With no room to expand laterally, two-
and three-story homes are being built to replace the
smaller ones that once lined our tiny streets and

A tight ship. (facing page) A captain’s bed, inspired

by the reading nooks in Sarah Susanka’s book The
Not So Big House, fit neatly into the homeowners’
plan to build a house that didn’t waste an inch. Not
only does it have the playful appeal of a ship’s berth,
but it also transforms instantly into a private “guest
suite” with its own bath when the pocket doors just
beyond the kitchen are closed.

Sm all bu t standing tall . (right) Sigrid and Bob

raised the foundation of their new home 27 in. above
street level to provide privacy from passers-by and
help it stand out beside its two-story neighbors.

139
 Bob and I spent many months contemplating what
Smart Moves for a Small Home
size house to build. We are empty-nest baby boom-
Features that make the most of limited space are
designed into every room of Sigrid and Bob’s home. ers with no grandchildren in the foreseeable future.
But the skylights, built-ins, and pocket doors lend
more than a few extra inches: They also introduce The common wisdom was to build a home with
enough charm and character to fill a house twice
its size.
maximum resale value should we wish to move. But
did we need all that space? And could we afford the
Existing
quality workmanship, appliances, and materials we
garage wanted if we built a larger home? The cost of home
Master
Room for bath construction, we knew, follows a simple formula
a stairway
was figured Guest of dollars per square foot. With a specific budget
in, in case bath
the couple’s in mind, we calculated the cost of building a home
Office/
needs with high-end workmanship, materials, and appli-
Den
change.
Pocket ances. The answer was soon obvious: We could build
doors
slide out the house we wanted if we kept it small.
A built-in of sight.
captain’s Uncertain of what to do, we invited Charles Lane,
bed provides a local realtor and dear friend, over for a glass of
privacy for Built-in
shelves,
guests and a
Master cabinets,
wine and described our dilemma. His advice was
reading nook
for every day.
bedroom and benches simple: Build the house you want to live in.
add
functionality So as an exercise we made a list of exactly—and
Kitchen and reduce
Skylights
clutter.
only—what we needed to live and entertain:
and a loft-
style ceiling
keep the
space open.
■■ One room to “live” in with multiple doors open-
ing to the outside.
■■ An open kitchen with a big island (which could also
Family room
be used for things other than food preparation).
■■ One bedroom large enough to accommodate a
Breakfast
nook
French
king-size bed.
doors ■■ Two bathrooms, one with a deep tub.
■■ Well-organized closet space.
■■ A dining area large enough to seat our long-
running dinner group of eight people.
■■ A small home office with room for a computer and
An outdoor patio adds
room for entertaining.
space to pay bills, etc.
North
■■ A private place for an overnight guest to sleep and
an adjacent bath.
01 2 4 6 ft.
■■ Lots of outdoor entertaining and living space,
Scale in fee
with room for pots and planted areas.

After many floor-plan doodles, scribbles, and revi-

sions, we called in architect Jeff Jeannette to discuss
our unconventional concept. We wanted to build a
casual “beach house” on one level, with high ceilings
for a loft-like feel. The resulting structure would

140 sm a ll houses

measure less than 1,200 sq. ft. We chose Jeff because
he came highly recommended, we’d seen his work,
and we felt he was willing to collaborate—rather
than make a personal statement—on the design of
our home. It proved to be a great decision. Dur-
ing our first meeting I presented story boards, like
the ones I use for my design work, as a visual aid to
help describe our ideas. To this he added his own
measure of creativity, knowledge, and experience
R aise the ceiling.
Given the house’s small
size, the single most
dramatic way to create a
feeling of spaciousness
was to raise the ceiling.
Use pock et door s.
The small size of the house
made pocket doors a neces-
sity. In some locations there is
simply not enough space for a
standard door to swing open.
The doors adjacent to the
captain’s bed, for example, are
completely hidden until pulled
out, but are key to a flexible
floor plan.
and returned with a great plan that required little
revision. And he remained involved throughout
the building process, always available to answer
unanticipated questions.
Intrigued by that concept of loft living, we let that
vision guide our choice of which interior walls to
extend to the ceiling and which to leave at a header
height of 9 ft. An exposed forced-air heater duct and
skylights also emphasize the loft feel and draw the
a bet ter house , not a bigger one 141

eye upward. Occasionally I have tried to visualize
what our house would have been like with traditional
8-ft. ceilings. Although the footprint would have
been identical, the sensation of a lower ceiling seems
Build it in. (above left) A house this small requires a
lot of built-in storage to control clutter, so every room
in the house makes use of deep drawers, cupboards,
and shelves. Cupboards along the fireplace wall house
stereo and TV equipment. Drawers under the ban-
quette and the captain’s bed hold oversize serving
items and extra bedding.

almost claustrophobic. It’s amazing what psycho- Create the illusion of space. (above right) Kitchen
logical space a high ceiling provides. cabinets are designed one foot taller than standard
Building a small house, we discovered, isn’t a mat- (another visual trick to draw the eye upward), allowing
for seldom-used items to be placed above.
ter of just shrinking everything down to size. We
used specific strategies and design elements, beyond
raising ceiling heights, to help our small home seem
more spacious (see p. 140 and 144). And as satisfied
as we are with the small scale of our new house, we
did provide for the possibility of a phase two: an
additional two bedrooms and bath over the attached
garage at the rear of the house. In this design, our of-
fice area would be replaced by a stairway that would
ascend to the top of the existing 530-sq.-ft. garage,
which was designed with reinforcements to carry the
weight of a second story.
Now that our home is complete, we’re the ones
hearing the comments, and they sound like this: “If
we didn’t have so much stuff, we could live like you
do.” Or “The truth is, we live in only three rooms—
our bedroom, den, and kitchen. That’s exactly
what you’ve built.” Or—my husband’s favorite—
“Congratulations, dude, you’ve built a purely
selfish house.”

142 sm a ll houses
 Splurge or sav e ? (below)
Sigrid did both. For the sconces
over the captain’s bed she
selected $130 copies (top)
rather than the designer
originals. In the bath she
used reasonably priced tiles
from Walker Zanger’s® Soho
series to avoid the look of flat
“machine-made” tiles (center).
But she shelled out for a pricey
Dornbracht® faucet (bottom)
“for its sculptural beauty and
because it can be seen from all
angles of the house.”

Expand space out door s. (facing page and above)

A raised stone patio adds 375 sq. ft. of outdoor living
space, easily accessible through the front door as well
as from a pair of French doors off the living room. A
wrought-iron table and chairs at one end and recycled-
wood Adirondack chairs at the other make these two
areas the summertime dining and living rooms.

a bet ter house , not a bigger one 143

 furnishing to fit

After living in a home with 2,000 sq. ft.,

here’s how Sigrid and Bob fit their furniture
and possessions into a much smaller space:

Start with Placement

During the framing stage, the couple deter-
mined the precise location of their seven
major furniture pieces by moving newspaper
templates about the floor so that electri-
cal outlets and TV cables could be properly
positioned. Sigrid also made rough scale
drawings of the sconces she had selected and
taped them up at various heights around the
rooms to determine their best height relative
to the furniture before the wiring was done.

Refresh with Slipcovers

In a small house with few rooms, it’s impor-
tant to be able to change the scenery from
time to time. So when Sigrid ordered the sofa
she ordered two sets of slipcovers (spring
and fall “wardrobes”) and had the factory
make two for the existing chair as well. This
strategy also helps prevent excessive wear.

Fill in with “Part-Time” Furniture

The couple purchased six stackable Bellini
chairs from Heller after seeing them at a local
cafe. Two are used as dining chairs. The oth-
ers store compactly in the garage, if needed
for additional seating. Small wooden stools
and benches are scattered throughout the
house, filling in as end tables and stepstools
as needed.

Don’t Sacrifice Comfort for Scale

Sigrid’s philosophy for furnishing smaller
spaces is to use a few large pieces rather
than multiple small ones. That meant mak-
ing sure the bedroom was large enough to
accommodate a king-size bed and a favorite
pine armoire rather than buy a smaller bed
and dresser.

144 sm a ll houses
a bet ter house , not a bigger one 145
 Site sensitiv e. Placing the house in a small clearing preserves
aspects of the site that made it an attractive place to build. Cedar
shingles and a metal roof are durable and low maintenance, and
complement the setting. Photo taken at A. Photo on the facing
page taken at B.

146 sm a ll houses
 By Matthew O’Malia Build Like This

I
n 2008, when my business partner and I decided Design it to be compact
to form a design/build firm, we agreed to build to Wendy and Bill came to us because they were inter-
the highest standard of sustainability and to do so ested in building the smallest and most sustainable
cost-effectively. With all our projects, we hoped to home they could for their retirement. Of the plans
achieve a synergy between designing for human we offer, they chose to work with our 1,000-sq.-ft.
comfort, building in response to the site, and achiev- plan, which includes one bedroom; two bathrooms;
ing long-term durability. We quickly agreed that the an open kitchen, dining, and living space; and a
Passive House standard would be the most compre- small study.
hensive and clear measure of our success. To The shape of the house was influenced by our
demonstrate that we had the ability to reach the desire to create a simple but well-proportioned
standard, we built our first prototype, a house we home. The main living space lies beneath the gabled
called the GO Home. To reach the Passive House portion of the house, with the supporting functions
standard in Maine’s cold climate, we developed a beneath a shed roof that wraps the side and back of
new way to design and build homes collaboratively. this main space. The entry porch is recessed under
The GO Home, completed in 2009, was Passive
House certified, achieved LEED platinum, and was
named the U.S. Green Building Council’s residential
project of the year.
Since building the GO Home we’ve refined our
design-and-build approach in completing several
other high-performance projects. This house in Bath,
Maine, is based on one of our design-plan packages
that delivers (depending on the site) a house that
could meet the Passive House standard, that’s com-
fortable and attractive, and that has a modest base
cost—roughly $160 per sq. ft. Here is how we achieve
such grand results on such a low budget.

147
 b
d spaces. For example, the plan easily can be adapted for a client
Porch
Living
area
Bedroom
c Location: Bath, Maine
e
Kitchen
Dining
area
North
Entry
the shed roof on the south facade, and the screened-
in porch is carved into the northeast corner of
the house.
To create interior spaces that have a small foot-
print but still feel generous, we designed an open
floor plan for the kitchen, living, and dining areas.
These spaces also provide direct access to the
bedroom and the bathrooms to avoid hallways and
redundant circulation. We also increased the height
of the ceiling to 9 ft. and the size of the windows in
the main space. The result is an open interior with a
strong exterior connection.
Adapt it to its site
Wendy and Bill’s site was challenging, and in many
ways it tempered the performance potential of the
house. The site is surrounded by beautiful, mature
hardwood trees, which made it difficult to get the
solar gain required for the Passive House standard.
We all agreed that the trees were more important
than the standard, given that the house would still
perform exceptionally well.
148 sm a ll houses
Designed for Comfort and Flexibility
The footprint of this house is a simple rectangle. There are no
complicated jogs in the exterior walls, which makes insulating and
air-sealing easier. The plan is also flexible in the arrangement of
who needs a two-bedroom home, and the placement of the
kitchen, living, and dining areas is adjustable. Beyond the interior,
two outdoor spaces influence the living experience. A covered
entry, an asset to any house, is especially important in regions that
have seasonally inclement weather. A screened-in porch, which
is carved into the back corner of the house, creates a retreat that
can be used as a getaway for the homeowners—an important
feature in a small home—or for entertaining guests.
SPECS
Bedrooms: 1
Bathrooms: 2
Size: 1,000 sq. ft.
Cost: $160 per sq. ft. (base plan)
Completed: 2011
Architect: Matthew O’Malia; www.GOLogic.us
Builder: Alan Gibson; www.GOLogic.us
Annual energy expenses: $1,000 (8,124kwh)
Photos taken at
lettered positions.
0 2 4 8 ft.
The house plan was developed with the intention
of having its longest axis running east to west so that
the living-room wall full of windows would face the
sun to the south. On this narrow site, however, the
longest axis runs north to south, and the window-
filled living-room wall faces east. Although the
siting of the house doesn’t provide ideal access to the
sun, it does provide terrific views. We didn’t totally
give up on passive solar gain, though. We modified
the plan and placed three massive tilt-turn windows
on the south-facing gable end. The windows pro-
vide abundant daylight in the kitchen, dining, and
living areas and much-needed solar gain during the
heating season. Such large windows in a small house
also create an unexpected but welcoming look upon
approach and give the simple house character.
Make it efficient and buildable
Our version of high-performance, cost-effective
construction relies on a superinsulated slab on
grade, hybrid SIP walls, a truss roof, triple-glazed
German windows, and mechanical ventilation with
heat recovery.

We build atop a slab for several reasons. Most
important, a slab-on-grade foundation is the most
cost-effective way of providing high levels of floor
insulation and interior thermal mass. To ensure that
the energy from solar gain is modulated and stored
and does not result in overheating, it is critical to
have a large thermal mass exposed to solar heat. In
many cases, a slab on grade requires little excava-
tion work and can accommodate challenging site
conditions such as ledge, which was present with
this house.
The wall section is made up of a load-bearing 2×4
stud wall insulated with dense-pack cellulose and
8-in.-thick EPS SIPs wrapped around the exterior.
The R-value of this assembly is about R-50, with
almost no thermal bridging. In addition, it’s easy
to air-seal. This approach also enables all the
A tailor ed fit. White-oak cabinets topped with
soapstone countertops offer just enough storage in
the kitchen, which isn’t designed for entertaining
but for simple meal prep. Door-size windows bring
daylight into the space, which sits between a small
dining area and the main entry. Photo taken at C on
floor plan.
mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems to be
run through the 2×4 wall conventionally, as opposed
to creating chases in the SIPs. Finally, the SIPs
install quickly, and because they are factory-cut,
there is less site waste.
We like to use raised-heel trusses for our roof
construction because they are cost-effective and easy
to install. We blow 24 in. of cellulose onto our attic
floors. In addition to the insulation, we install a layer
of ZIP System sheathing on the underside of the
trusses and tape the seams. This layer provides an
build lik e this 149
six elements of a better home

Mechanical chase

1
Flashing tape

5
ZIP System sheathing

ZIP System tape

Cellulose
4

Pressure-treated
Aluminum flashing capillary break

Self-adhesive membrane

2-in. rigid foam

Perimeter drain
 G•OLogic’s approach is based on a highly
insulated, airtight building shell that makes use Windows typically account for one-third to one-half
of solar gain to lower space-heating demands, of a home’s heat loss. For that reason alone, O’Malia
allowing the cost and complexity of the mechanical
systems to be minimized. The cost savings can be
invested in envelope improvements. To achieve the
results O’Malia and his team are after, they need to
address six critical building details.
1 Insulation
To help keep interior temperatures at a constant
and comfortable 70°F, 24 in. of cellulose (R-84) fills
the attic floor, 8-in.-thick EPS-filled SIPs and a 2×4
bearing wall insulated with dense-pack cellulose
create an R-50 wall assembly, and 12 in. of EPS rigid
insulation below the slab yields an R-60 foundation.
5-in. slab
6-in. EPS foam
6-mil poly
vapor barrier
Flowable fill
Structural fill
6 A concrete slab is the most cost-effective way of
2 Windows
uses triple-glazed windows with thermally broken
frames to reduce heat loss.
3 Air-Sealing
ZIP System wall sheathing is attached beneath the
roof trusses, and its seams are taped to reduce air
movement through the ceiling. Flashing tape seals
the top of the wall assembly and the seams between
the SIPs. Self-adhesive membrane is used to seal the
subslab poly vapor barrier to the SIPs.
4 Thermal Bridging
The principal components used to reduce thermal
bridging through the walls are the SIPs. By reducing
heat transfer through the walls and minimizing cold
spots that can lead to condensation, SIPs provide a
more complete thermal boundary than stick-framed
walls. In addition, the stick-framing in the shed roof
and the roof trusses in the main gable are spaced
24 in. on center to reduce the amount of lumber in
the roof and wall assemblies, which further reduces
thermal bridging.
5 Ventilation
A heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) draws outside air
into a heat-exchanging core, where it is warmed
by conditioned interior-exhaust air. In this house,
air is pulled through the HRV from the kitchen and
bathrooms and fresh air is supplied to the main liv-
ing room and the bedroom closet. The ductwork is
housed in a chase beneath the insulated attic floor.
6 Thermal Mass
storing solar energy and slowly releasing it into the
living space over time. The 5-in.-thick slab is insu-
lated to R-60 at its nonthickened portions with 12 in.
of EPS foam. Superinsulating the slab prevents solar
energy from leaking into the ground or through its
11-in.-thick perimeter. A 2-in.-thick layer of rigid foam
surrounding the slab keeps the ground sufficiently
warm and keeps the slab from heaving and cracking.
Lesson Learned
In this house we added 6 in. of rigid insulation
instead of compacted gravel under the nonthick-
ened portions of the slab to increase the insulation
levels to R-60. It was quick and easy to install, but it
made installing the subslab plumbing difficult. We’ll
go back to adding gravel directly beneath the slab,
despite the R-value reduction.

Basic but beautiful . This bath, one of two,
features a deep soaking tub beneath multiple
windows. Full of function, the space also creates
a getaway within the compact floor plan. Photo
taken at D on floor plan.
air barrier above the conditioned living space. The
air barrier also controls moisture transfer through
the roof assembly, but we install soffit and gable-end
vents anyway to reduce the potential of condensa-
tion on the underside of the roof deck.
The beauty of this type of design and construction
is that if the building shell is built well and oriented
correctly, then the house needs little heating or
cooling to be comfortable year-round. The super-
insulation and the thermal mass maintain a constant
interior temperature. As a result, the main mechani-
cal system for the house is not the heating system
but the ventilation system, which ensures tempered
fresh air throughout the house. For about $200 a
year, a few sections of electric-resistance baseboard
152 sm a ll houses
make sure that the house stays at 70°F. When plan-
ning a ventilation system, we place the supply of
fresh air in the bedrooms and living spaces and
exhaust stale air from where moisture and smells are
created most—in the bathrooms and kitchen.
Don’t sacrifice aesthetics
Even when working within the constraints of a tight
budget, we acknowledge the value of creating invit-
ing, attractive spaces. We allocate larger portions of
the budget to finishes and materials that will experi-
ence the most use, such as flooring, countertops, and
bathroom fixtures and materials. Accommodating
wear and tear and moisture successfully means that
over time the surfaces within the home develop a
desirable patina.
Downsizing brought the homeowners’ actual
needs into clear focus, which is also reflected in the
home’s design. For instance, they recognized that
cooking would never be an elaborate affair in their
new home. We also followed the clients’ lead in
developing the materials palette for the house. The
intent was to keep the interior clean and simple so
that the focus on the surrounding landscape would
be maintained, but also to introduce a few beauti-
ful, natural accents, such as the white-oak floor and
kitchen cabinets and the soapstone countertops.
The bathrooms are modestly adorned with simple
white wainscot, pedestal sinks, and floor tiles to
evoke a traditional cottage style common along the
Maine coast.
That idea is reflected on the exterior as well. We
used cedar shingles for the walls that will weather
to a silver gray and that denote coastal living. To
conserve money, we opted not to install any elabo-
rate trim details. However, we did flare a wall section
on the front of the house to create an eave above the
large windows. This detail protects the windows
from rain, but it also hints at the high level of crafts-
manship put into this house. Less-expensive exterior
finishes could have been selected, but this is not a
cheap home. It’s an inexpensive home, designed to
be attractive and uncomplicated to build.
 our choice for high-
performance windows
Giv en M a ine’s clim ate ,
we use triple-pane windows with
glazing that accepts at least
50 percent of the sun’s energy.
Several windows from North
American and European manu-
facturers meet these require-
ments. However, we have found
that for their performance,
quality, finishes, and operability,
EGE windows from Germany
(EGE.de/en) are our most cost-
competitive option. We import
them directly.

Passiv e impact. Large

tilt-turn windows that
meet strict Passive
House standards open
the living room to sum-
mer breezes, but they
also have the ability to
keep cold Maine winters
at bay. Photo taken at E
on floor plan

a big lit tle house on the r idge 153

The Neighbor
Out Back By Michael Fifield

H
anna Yoshimura is a Japanese artist who
spends most of the year near Tokyo. When
summer comes along, she returns to Eugene,
Oregon, where she owns a house that she rents
out. Her tenants aren’t displaced when she returns,
though. Hanna moves into this studio in the back-
yard to live and work while she’s here.
At a compact 269 sq. ft. (including lofts), the stu-
dio apartment demanded a commodious design. An
11-ft. by 12-ft. workspace at the heart of the studio is
bordered on each side by support spaces: a bathroom
and a utility closet to the east, and a kitchen and a
clothes closet to the west. The south wall is about
half glass, with a pair of French doors that open onto
a small deck. This garden connection, along with
views of neighboring gardens from the kitchen
and bath, extends sightlines and gives the studio a
The show er is the room . A handheld shower
roomy feel. wand, waterproof finishes, and a floor drain turn the
In the summer, operable clerestory windows bathroom into a shower when the doors slide shut.
Photo taken at B on floor plan.
make it easy to take advantage of cooling breezes as
they cross ventilate the studio in the evening. The A lit tle home away from home. (facing page)
exposed concrete floor provides a high-mass surface Tucked in a corner of the backyard, this 269-sq.-ft.
studio apartment includes bed, bath, kitchen, and
that takes on cool-breeze temperatures overnight, workspace. A glass canopy over the deck protects the
helping to moderate rising daytime temperatures. entry and lets in light no matter what the weather.
Photo taken at C on floor plan.

154
a big lit tle house on the r idge 155
 sleeping loft aBov e , K itchen Below. The concrete fl oor is incised with control joints to
resemble a “good luck” tatami-mat pattern. Operable windows over the workbench and the
south-facing doors foster cross ventilation. Photo taken at A on fl oor plan.

WorkSpaCE/Support SpaCE
the center of the studio is dedicated to art
projects, and the workspace can expand
outward to include the front deck when the
Kitchen B Bath weather is good. sleeping lofts over the kitchen
and bath complete the plan.

studio

0 1 2 4 ft.
Closet

Photos taken at
a
lettered positions.

Mechanicals
North

Deck

156 sm a ll houses
 A Tiny Traditional
By Charles Bickford Japanese House

I
n a small town north of Seattle, three carpenters
devoted six months to building a house in the tra-
ditional Japanese style for a local aikido teacher.
Although it was a group project, the job took shape
under the careful eye of Dale Brotherton, who
apprenticed with a teahouse builder in California
for seven years and later practiced traditional joinery
in Japan for two years.
The woods used in the project were all local
species and hand-planed, rather than sanded, to a
smooth perfection. The builders used Ponderosa
pine for floorboards, Port Orford cedar for posts and
interior trim, Douglas fir for framing, and western
red cedar for the exterior. The interior walls were
finished with a type of plaster known as juraku, a
troweled-on stucco finish that emulates the tradi-
tional tsuchi-kabe (earth wall), a clay/straw/sand
mix. Above the board-and-batten siding, the exte-
rior walls were coated with a form of acrylic stucco.

Elements of a cou ntry house.

Although smaller than most houses,
the house still possesses many design
features found in traditional Japanese
architecture, including deep exposed
roof overhangs, and sliding window
panels.

157
 Joinery serv es double dut y as
or namentation. (below) Haunched-
tusk tenons intersect and support one
corner of the second-floor tie beams.
As in much of the house, the joints here
are held in place by wedges and pins,
not glue.

One room of simple contr asts. (above) The

house’s exposed interior framing demonstrates
the contrast between unmilled cedar logs and
the precise joinery and smooth finishes of milled
lumber. The understair storage (kaidan dansu)
is made of cherry and white pine; the charcoal
brazier (irori), framed with cherry and fir, is only
decorative here.

Bedroom stor age doesn’t

clut ter the floor . (above)
Hidden behind sliding screens,
clothing and personal items are
kept in wall closets rather than
in trunks or bureaus, keeping the
floor plan relatively simple.

gr eeting visitor s. An orna-

mental garden and gate signal
the homes traditional Japanese
heritage.

158 sm a ll houses
 part 4

Sheds, Studios,
and Other Small Structures

the watershed: a writing studio 160

baking studio alfresco 163
a tree house that's for the birds 166
teatime in wisconsin 168
off the grid, on the shore 170
an old-time garden shed 172
studio, storage, and more 175
shinto shed 176
the benefits of a smaller scale 177

a big lit tle house on the r idge 159

The Watershed:
A Writing Studio
M
y family owns a small piece of former
pastureland in central Oregon. When my
parents asked me to design a writing stu-
dio for the property, I worried that putting a build-
ing there would tarnish its ecological richness—that
we would commit the age-old blunder of ruining a
rare place by wanting to live right on it.
We talked over the question of building some-
thing for a couple of years. My family is a tough jury.
My brother and my father are a research ecologist
and a biologist, respectively, and my mother is an
160
By Erin Moore
environmental philosopher and a nature writer. We
all had a stake in the integrity of our tiny nature
preserve, my mother needed a place to do her work,
and I wanted to test out some new design ideas.
Our discussions unearthed two questions that
became my design challenges: What kind of writing
studio could we build without bringing a road or
electricity to the site? And what could we build that
would also disappear conveniently at the end of its
useful life?
Before I finished the design, we took turns sitting
in a chair on the hillside where the studio would be.
We chose our favorite views, narrowed those down
to just a handful, and then carefully measured where
the openings should be to define them best.
The large window over the desk is the most tra-
ditional. It frames a moderately distant view of the
field and the riparian forest. The high window at the
rear frames a bit of sky in which there is often a rap-
tor taking advantage of a local updraft.
Opposite the door is a very low window about
18 in. square that is meant to draw your eye to a
patch of grass just outside—a view that is not extra-
ordinary until you look closely and discover some-
thing like a new bloom or a cricket. It is easy to track
seasonal changes in the color of the grasses through
this window. It’s also my 2-year-old niece’s favorite.
Sit ting lightly on, and in, the l andscape.
Nested inside a prefabricated steel framework, this
diminutive writing studio overlooks a meadow. The
studio’s butterfly roof directs runoff into a trough that
serves as the local watering hole (facing page).

t h e wa t e r s h e d : a w r i t i n g s t u d i o 161
 The cedar posts ar e bolted to fl anges w elded to the steel fr ame .
Tongue-and-groove siding slips into grooves plowed in the sides of the cedar posts,
making walls that can expand, contract, and breathe well in this damp climate.

Room w ith a view. A Cedar Box Inside

The big window above a Steel Exoskeleton
the writing desk frames Flanges are drilled to
a riparian forest in the attach the cedar posts.
distance, while below
the desk, awning-style
hinged panels rise
to welcome meadow
breezes.

The 3-in. by 4-in.

steel frame is mitered
Prefabricated for at the corners.

easy assembly on site

A quartet of concrete piers supports the studio. We
cast the piers in place, with many hands making
light work of it. We didn’t miss having an electric-
powered concrete mixer; instead, we put the
concrete on a tarp and mixed it by pulling up on
the corners.
The second stage—the structure—is a single
freestanding steel armature. We had it fabricated in
a metal shop, and then moved it to our woodshop
where we cut and dry-fit the cedar skin and the poly-
carbonate roof to the frame. Then we took it back to
its bare bones and moved the frame to the site with a
front-loader. It can be removed the same way when it
is no longer needed.
We brought the rest of the parts to the site by
foot, where we made final adjustments with battery-
powered tools. The trail we blazed as we carried each
piece is now the footpath to the studio, which we call
the “watershed” for its rain-gathering roof and for
the larger watershed that it inhabits, at least for now.

162 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

 Baking Studio
By Ruth Lively Alfresco

W
hen cookbook author Fran Gage was
making plans for her new wood-fired
oven, she envisioned it out in the open,
surrounded by a circle of redwood trees, just steps
from the Gages’ weekend house on a mountainside
above Navarro, California. But when friend and
architect Bob Hersey suggested the oven would
be more useful if sheltered from the area’s winter
rains, Fran agreed. So he designed a 15-ft.-square
building with three walls of glass and wide sliding
doors. While they were at it, the Gages decided they
Nestled in a circle of r edwood
might as well have a sink, a couple of gas burners, tr ees, Fran Gage’s 225-sq.-ft. baking
and room for a table and chairs, in addition to Fran’s studio houses a wood-fired oven, a
sink, a two-burner stove, a worktable,
worktable. And thus a bread baking studio was born. a counter, and storage space, plus a
Inside and out, the completed baking studio is dining area. A louvered cupola draws
a study in functional simplicity. The spare style excess heat from the room. The studio
is a great dining and entertaining
and large expanses of glass offer the best of both space, guaranteed to be cozy even in
worlds—protection from the elements and a direct chilly weather.
link to the beauty of the outdoors. “The building is
almost transparent,” says Hersey, “and from inside
you’re very aware of the surrounding redwoods.” wood-fired brick-and-plaster oven, made by Peta-
The framing and exterior siding are redwood; luma oven builder Alan Scott, dominates one corner
interior woodwork is Douglas fir. The floor and of the room. The Gages have discovered that the
counter are concrete treated with a clear sealant. studio is great for entertaining. Fran says, “Baking
Fran and her husband Sidney concocted the hang- with wood is a slow and ancient process that allows
ing lamps with parts from the hardware store. The us to enjoy long evenings with friends.”

163
164 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s
Bak ing in the r edwoods.
Although no longer a profes-
sional baker, Fran Gage fans
the flames of her passion in a
small building at the family’s
weekend retreat. It takes
about four hours to heat the
oven, but one firing is enough
to bake bread, roast some
ducks and a vegetable gratin,
bake a fruit tart, and finally
slow-cook lamb shanks and
beans overnight.

bak ing studio a lfr esco 165

A Tree House
That’s
for the Birds by Maureen Friedman

N
eeding a spare room for occasional over-
night guests, ornithologist Alan Poole
first thought about building a yurt on
his wooded lot. Poole asked contractor and fellow
bird-watcher Mike Sylvia of Right Angel Restoration
to tackle the project. Rather than a yurt, Sylvia sug-
gested that Poole consider building a tree house that
could be used for nature watching as well as hous-
ing guests. Poole, the author of Ospreys: A Natural
and Unnatural History and the editor of The Birds of
North America, says that Sylvia didn’t have to work
hard to get him to agree.
Set approximately 12 ft. above ground, the tree
house is constructed of rough pine supplied by a
local sawmill, recycled windows and doors, and a
metal roof. The platform measures 16 ft. by 16 ft.
and the house is 10 ft. by 12 ft. Sylvia used Garnier
®
Limb brackets (www.treehouses.com) to affix the
supports for the tree house to the trees. These brack-
ets allow the tree to continue growing and enable the
structure to sway gently in the wind. Sylvia built the
tree house in addition to doing most of the design
work. At Poole’s suggestion, Sylvia added bunk beds
constructed from cedar for overnight guests and a
porch for sitting and practicing yoga.

166 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

 Stepping lightly.
Built with brackets that
enable the trees to con-
tinue growing and with a
railing contoured around
nearby tree trunks,
this small house treads
lightly on the land while
taking full advantage of
its surroundings.

a t r e e hou s e t h at ' s f or t h e bi r d s 167

Teatime in
Wisconsin
H
omeowners Jim and Cheryl Smeja wanted
to build a teahouse in their backyard that
appeared to float on water like a lily pad.
A collaborative effort involving designer Amber
Westerman, carpenter Randolph Fleming, and land-
scaper Larry Terrill was able to make this happen.
The slope of the yard made the illusion possible, with
168 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s
by Maureen Friedman
construction of an upper pond with waterfalls drop-
ping to a pool below.
The teahouse rests on a reinforced-concrete
foundation with wings covered with a limestone
veneer extending on each side to hold back the up-
per pond. Pressure-treated floor joists laid on the
sill plate cantilever 3 ft. beyond the foundation to
create a walkway around the house. The decking is
plantation-grown ipé. Above, a double layer of raf-
ters creates a two-tiered roof, which is sheathed with
2×8 Douglas fir boards alternating with bamboo and
covered with cedar shingles. The projecting rafter
tails extend just beyond the decking; the 61⁄ 2-ft.
clearance creates a heightened sense of shelter and
keeps out rain. Lag screws and nails are concealed
behind wood plugs.
Each wall of the teahouse is composed of four
custom-made screened doors created by Joel
Duncanson and set between corner posts. The two
middle doors hang on a concealed metal track at
the top and slip into wood runners attached to the
deck at the bottom, allowing a 6-ft. center opening
on each side. The lower exterior panel of each door
is wood detailed to look like stucco; the interior is
covered with grass cloth.
It’s in the details. Built over a con-
structed koi pond with custom-made rolling
screen doors created by Joel Duncanson, the
teahouse offers an enchanting getaway.

t e at i m e i n w i s c on s i n 169
Off the Grid,
on the Shore
F
ive years after architect Obie Bowman de-
signed their home on the Oregon coast, former
clients approached him to design a year-round,
multipurpose building to complement the house.
They wanted a greenhouse and writing studio that
would suit the rugged surroundings, stand up to
170 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s
by Maureen Friedman
coastal storms, and allow them to enjoy the ocean
views. The structure had to be low maintenance
and self-sufficient, and be built from sustainable,
environmentally friendly materials. A tall order for
a small building, perhaps, but Bowman rose to the
challenge and conceived the Garden House.
The 325-sq.-ft. structure’s concrete-mat founda-
tion and log-beam buttresses can easily withstand
the 90-mph winds howling off the ocean. Bowman
used locally harvested Port Orford cedar, salvaged
and recycled horizontal slat siding, and corrugated
sheet metal for the building’s exterior and roofing.
In one of the most interesting touches, he backed the
inside of the sheathing with sheet metal and used
the 2×10 studs and blocking to create niches and
shelving for storage and display.
The off-the-grid building is powered by a combi-
nation of integrated and remote photovoltaic panels.
Battery storage provides AC power for lighting,
outlets, and pumps that bring water to the outbuild-
ing from a nearby shallow well. Condensation and
rainwater from the roof also help to keep the two
holding tanks full.
Sustainable design. The large windows provide abundant natural light and in
combination with the dark concrete floors, the space is kept warm.

off t h e gr i d, on t h e shor e 171

An Old-Time
Garden Shed
T
here’s no obvious connection between bury-
ing utility lines and putting up a garden shed,
but that’s what happened at our house. After
years of trying to get the power company to stream-
line a patchwork of wires that crossed over our
backyard, the work finally happened. It meant that
at last we could improve our yard without worrying
about a trench carving it up in the future.
So we fi xed the drainage; terraced the slopes; and
built rock walls, a brick patio, and a pergola. We also
left a spot in the southeast corner for a garden shed.
172 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s
By david EdrinGTon
Make It More Than a Storage Bin
Initially the shed’s purpose was to store garden tools
and supplies that were clogging the garage. Its role
evolved into a place where we also could have tea
and maybe even camp out with the grandchildren.
The shed’s most important purpose, however, was to
anchor the corner of the yard visually, giving shape
to a series of roomlike outdoor spaces.
Starting points for the design included a porch
(teatime shelter on a rainy Oregon morning), a
steep roof (18-in-12 pitch to relate the shed to the
steep roof of the existing house), and no modern
construction materials. We did use a modern design
tool, though. Creating the design in SketchUp ®
let us build the shed on-screen, right down to the
number of studs. Our builder, Marv Glover, used
both two- and three-dimensional views as he
assembled the shed.
a tin y building w ith a big pR eSence .
In the southeast corner of the lot, at its high-
est point, the garden shed helps to defi ne
the borders of distinct outdoor spaces,
including a formal garden with a fountain
at its center.
a big lit tle house on the r idge 173
 M ak e it look old.
Exposed framing with
diagonal sheathing harkens
back to early-20th-century
building practices. Recycled
windows, an old Dutch door,
and used brick emphasize
the rustic feel.

Almost lik e a four-poster bed. (below)

Surrounded by bracketed posts, the porch
extends the architectural details and colors that
characterize the main house into the backyard.

It’s a sleepov er shed. (above) Camp-style

beds in the loft slip into dormers on both sides
of the steep roof. The hatch in the floor between
them leads to a pull-down ladder for access.

Construction notes
The shed’s rectangular footprint measures 8 ft. 6 in.
by 12 ft. 6 in.; a 4-ft.-6-in.-deep porch faces the yard.
Stick-framed with 2×4s, the shed is sheathed with
1×10 pine boards applied diagonally and exposed
on the inside as finished walls. All 12 windows are
made from recycled sash. An extrawide pull-down
stair leads to a loft, which has dormers front and
back. We built a bed into each dormer, with storage
underneath.
We compromised a bit on our old-materials-only
directive. Besides an electrical system, we installed
11⁄ 2-in. foil-faced rigid insulation under the roof
and wall shingles to boost thermal performance. We
also mixed our own weathered green stain for the
shingles and used gloss enamel paint on the trim
and other exposed wood.
The shed is a pleasure to look at any time we’re
in the garden, and it’s a wonderful retreat from the
house. We love it. The grandchildren love it. In the
summer, it is the last spot in the garden to be hit by
the late-evening sunset. It glows.

174 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

 Studio, Storage,
By Maureen Friedman and More

D
on’t let the pretty face and cozy interior
of this little structure fool you; it’s actu-
ally Deborah and Norman Lee’s backyard
storage building. This hardworking shed, christened
“the cottage” by the Lees, is a marvel at multi-
tasking. The 91⁄ 2-ft. by 6-ft. interior provides plenty
of wintertime storage for deck and patio furniture.
When warm weather arrives, interior decorator
Deb moves her drafting table and a comfy daybed
into the space and the storage area is transformed
into the perfect outdoor studio. The shed’s windows
and door were salvaged from a neighbor’s renova-
tion project, and the shed’s roof is outfitted with a
rainwater-collection system for the Lees’ gardens.
As an added bonus, the Lees agree there’s no better
place for watching the sunset at “happy hour” than
the inviting bistro set on the cottage’s deck.

Beyond stor age. The shed’s

inviting deck is surrounded by
the homeowners’ garden and
is the perfect spot to enjoy
the sunset.

175
Shinto Shed by Maureen Friedman

T
he extreme simplicity of the ancient shinmei-
zukuri style of Japanese architecture inspired
Glenn Montgomery’s 9-ft. by 12-ft. shed. This
shed is based on the design of Japan’s Ise Grand
Shrine. Montgomery built much of the shed from
reclaimed materials. These included 6×16 old-growth
timbers salvaged during a renovation of Denver’s
original Neusteter’s department store, and semi-
rotten 2×6 decking that Montgomery culled,
denailed, ripped, and rabbeted to create the red-
wood siding. The steel platform was salvaged from
commercial-foundation lagging, and the joists are
®
repurposed Unistrut rescued from job-site roll-
off containers. New corrugated galvanized roofing,
glazing, fasteners, and some steel plate rounded out
Montgomery’s materials list.
Early in the shed’s design phase, Montgomery
U nique har dwar e.
Montgomery designed decided that the large overhang would make a good
and fabricated the custom shelter for new finds that were destined for his shed
door pulls and hinges.
and, once that was completed, future projects. With
each load of salvaged materials, Montgomery reas-
sures his patient wife, Debbie, that he will “build
something with it someday.” But as everyone
knows, job-site salvage can’t just be taken home
and reused immediately. It must be seasoned for
at least five years.

176 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

 The Benefits of a
By Maureen Friedman
and Charles Bickford Smaller Scale

T
he beauty of a tiny building is that it can be
a quick way to try out a new design, color
scheme, or building technique. Even if you
get extravagant, it’s hard to break the bank in
35 sq. ft. And in the end, you get a place to store
your lawn mower or to nurture your inner hermit.
Here are some examples, both great and small, from
backyards around the country.

No Wr iter’s Block Her e. Incorporating

driftwood framing, recycled materials, and
stained glass by Gabriella Camilleri, South
Mountain Company of Martha’s Vineyard
made this writer’s studio for an affordable-
building fundraiser.

177
 Story book Shed. (above) During cocktail hour one
night, Karen Metzger sketched her ideal garden out-
building. That was all that her husband, Greg, needed
to begin work on their 8-ft. by 12-ft. shed. Built mostly
with salvaged materials, the shed has top-hinged win-
dows for ventilation, a gable and loft for storage, an
oversize rear door for bringing in large equipment, a
potting bench, and even a place to display the antlers
they found in the woods.

Dr essing Up the Boiler Room . On

Orcas Island, Washington, designer/builder
Chris Morris made a one-man show of this
outbuilding that houses a nearby hot tub’s
changing room and wood-fired boiler.

178 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

 Gothic Dairy-Bar n Shed. (left)“Labor intensive
but fun to build” is how Philip Bowman describes his
barn-style shed. Bowman kept the shed to 120 sq. ft.
to meet his city’s building code for a nonpermitted
shed, but its large loft area provides plenty of space
for lumber storage. To achieve the desired roof shape,
he wet 1 ⁄2 -in. plywood to bend it. He admits that a lot
of bandsaw and router work was required to accom-
plish his task.

Don’t Bur n It, Build

W ith It. (right) Located
on an island off the coast
of British Columbia, this
small building designed
and built by Netonia Yalte
is an example of cord-
wood masonry, walls built
with short lengths of logs
with concrete infill.

The Queen’s M agical Shed. Using the remains of projects “full of goodness,” Rory McDonnell
constructed this shed full of “good light and air circulation.” Too lovely to be used for storing the lawn
mower and out-of-season sporting goods, the shed was claimed by McDonnell’s wife, Catherine, as a
tree-sheltered retreat for dreaming, napping, and creating art.

the benefits of a smaller scale 179

 Cedar-Shak e Gar den Shed. Built on piers so that it
could be moved with a forklift if needed, this garden
shed was built for the owner’s new riding mower.
The walls were sided with cedar shakes to match the
house and were painted dark green to minimize the
visual impact in a tree-filled yard. False windows were
installed to add interest to the otherwise plain walls.
Homeowner Nick Poepping says the shed was a “fun
project and definitely adds a focal point” to his wife’s
flower gardens.

Let’s Pl ay House .
Thanks to an unknown
carpenter, there are
some children who will
grow up with a well-
grounded sense of
Victorian shingle-work.

Pot ting Shed and Mor e. What began as a simple shed evolved into a 16-ft. by 20-ft. outbuilding. A 12-ft. by
24-ft. shed-roof extension wraps around the rear and side to shelter tractors and yard tools, the east-wall window
provides natural light for a potting station, and a loft has storage for an “endless pile of construction debris” from
ongoing projects. The doors, windows, and finish materials reflect design elements in the house and barn.

180 sh e d s , s t u dio s , a n d o t h e r sm a l l s t ruc t u r e s

Shed for a Moder n Gl ass House. Architect Mark
LePage says this shed (far right of the main house)
“turned out to be one of our favorite projects.” After
his company completed a full restoration of a 1969 con-
temporary house, the homeowners requested that his
company design and build a modern shed to comple-
ment the house and pool.

It’s All About the

Gr ass. Running on a
theme of less wood, Dan
Neelands built this utility
building with straw-bale
walls and a sod roof.

the benefits of a smaller scale 181

 contributors
Charles Bickford is a Fine Home-
building senior editor.
Anne Corey is a former Inspired
House assistant editor.
David Edrington is an architect
and frequent contributor to Fine
Homebuilding. He's based in
Eugene, Ore.
Chris Ermides is a former Fine
Homebuilding associate editor. In
addition to writing and carpentry
he fills his time as a freelance web
producer for Taunton's Workshop
e-learnng series. He lives in Sara-
toga Springs, NY with his wife and
two sons.
David Evans has a design prac-
tice in Boulder, Colo.
Michael Fifield, FAIA, is a princi-
pal in Fifield Architecture + Urban
Design, and a Professor/
Co-Director of the Housing Focus
in the Department of Architecture
at the University of Oregon in
Eugene.
Maureen Friedman is the Fine
Homebuilding administrative
assistant.
182  
Timothy Gordon lives in Portland,
Ore., where he practices archi-
tecture. Whenever possible, he
spends time on the Oregon coast,
in the house he designed for his
mother.
Tina Govan, (www.tinagovan
.com) is principal of Tina Govan
Architect, Inc. in Raleigh, NC.
Russell Hamlet is a principal at
Studio Hamlet Architects (www
.studiohamlet.com), an innova-
tive and environmentally focused
architecture firm based on Bain-
bridge Island, Wash.
Matt Hutchins is a principal at
CAST architecture in Seattle
(www.CASTarchitecture.com).
Robert Knight is an architect in
Blue Hill, Maine.
Maria LaPiana is a former
Inspired House associate editor.
Ruth Lively is a former Fine
Gardening and Kitchen Gar-
dener editor and is the author
of Taunton's Complete Guide to
Growing Vegetables and Herbs
(Taunton Press, 2011).
Charles Miller worked as an
editor for Fine Homebuilding for
more than 30 years. After his
retirement, he moved to Califor-
nia, but he remains on the mast-
head as an editor at large.
Erin Moore is an assistant profes-
sor of architecture at the Univer-
sity of Oregon and principal of
FLOAT (www.floatwork.com).
Matthew O’Malia is a partner at
G•O Logic in Belfast, Maine.
Justin Pauly is an architect with a
practice based in Monterey, Calif.
He studied architecture at U.C.
Berkeley.
Nir Pearlson practices architec-
ture in Eugene Ore, specializing
in low-impact and small-home
design.
Parker Platt is a principal at
Platt Architecture (www
.plattarchitecture.com) in
Brevard, N.C.
Samara Rafert is a former Inspired
House editorial assistant.
Debra Judge Silber is the Fine
Homebuilding managing editor.
Sigrid Simonson a former sports-
wear designer, is now the Vice
President and Creative Direc-
tor for Brentwood Originals, a
manufacturer of decorative indoor
and outdoor pillows for the major
mass market retailers.
Peter Kurt Woerner, FAIA, is an
architect and builder based in
New Haven, Conn.
Jonathan White is a builder and
writer based on Orcas Island,
Wash.

Sarah Susanka a best-selling

author, architect, and cultural
visionary, is leading a movement
that is redefining the American
home. Her “build better, not
bigger” approach to residential
design has been embraced by
millions. She is a member of the
College of Fellows of the American
Institute of Architects and a Senior
Fellow of the Design Futures Coun-
cil. More about her work and her
Not So Big® House series of books
at www. notsobighouse.com.

Jesse Thompson is an architect

in Portland, Maine. He is a LEED
Accredited Professional and a
Certified Passive House Consul-
tant at Kaplan Thompson Archi-
tects (www.kaplanthompson.com).

Roxana Vargas-Greenan and

Trent Greenan live in Oakland,
Calif. Their firm is Vargas Greenan
Architecture - Civic Design (www
.vargasgreenan.com).

c o n t r i b u t o r s   183
 credits
All photos are courtesy of Fine Home-
building magazine (FHB) © The Taunton
Press, Inc., or Inspired House magazine
(IH), © The Taunton Press, Inc., except as
noted below:
pp. 2–7: Not So Big Solutions: How much
space do you really need? by Sarah Susan-
ka, IH issue 14 and In your new house, how
much space do you really need? by Sarah
Susanka, IH issue 15. Illustrations by Sarah
Susanka, colored by Christine Erikson
pp. 10–15: A Big Little House on the
Ridge by Jonathan White, FHB issue 171.
Photos by Charles Miller. Drawings by
Paul Perreault.
pp. 16–20: Raising the Baby Barn by Peter
Kurt Woerner, FHB issue 179. Photos and
drawings by Peter Kurt Woerner except
for photos pp. 19 and 20 by Bill Seitz.
pp. 21–27: Did Starting Small Work Out?
by Robert Knight, FHB issue 219. Photos
by Charles Miller except for photos
pp. 21, 22 (top), and 23 (right) by Robert
Knight. Floor-plan and elevation draw-
ings by Martha Garstang Hill. Drawings
p. 26 courtesy of Robert Knight.
pp. 28–30: Getaways: Watch Island
retreat by Inspired House staff, IH issue 1.
Photos by Randy O’Rourke. Drawing by
Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 31–33: Getaways: Nestled in the trees
by Inspired House staff, IH issue 3. Photos
by davidduncanlivingston.com. Drawing
by Martha Garstang Hill.
184  
pp. 34–36: Getaways: A place to read and
relax by Anne Corey, IH issue 4. Photos
by Norman McGrath. Drawing by Martha
Garstang Hill.
pp. 37–39: Getaways: Legacy on the lake
by Maria LaPiana, IH issue 6. Photos by
davidduncanlivingston.com.
pp. 40–42: Getaways: Do-it-yourself
retreat by Samara Rafert, IH issue 8.
Photos by Mike Jensen. Drawings by
Martha Garstang Hill.
p. 43: Cranking Up the View by Chris
Ermides, FHB issue 184. Photos by
Benjamin Benschneider.
pp. 44–45: At Home in the Woods by
Chris Ermides, FHB issue 192. Photos by
Benjamin Benschneider.
pp. 46–47: Finishing Touch: The Crib by
Maureen Friedman, FHB issue 237. Photos
by Anice Hoachlander.
p. 48: Chainsaw Tour de Forest by Chris
Ermides, FHB issue 180. Photos by Paul
Joseph.
pp. 50–57: A Garden Cottage for Low-
Impact Living by Nir Pearlson, FHB
issue 235. Photos by mikedeanphoto
.com. Drawings by Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 58–62: The Second Time Around by
Charles Bickford, FHB issue 220. Photos
by Brian Vanden Brink except for photo
p. 59 courtesy of South Mountain Co.
Drawings by Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 63-69: Small Cottage Makes a Big
Splash by David Evans, FHB issue 162.
Photos by Roe A. Osborn except for
photo p. 66 (bottom) courtesy of Invisible
Structures. Drawings by Paul Perreault.
pp. 70–77: A Higher Standard by Jesse
Thompson, FHB issue 235. Photos by
Trent Bell. Floor-plan drawings by Martha
Garstang Hill; construction drawing by
John Hartman.
pp. 78–83: Carriage-House Comeback
by Matt Hutchins, FHB issue 227. Photos
by Charles Miller except for photo p. 83
(bottom right) by Rob Yagid. Drawings by
Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 84–91: Spall & Spacious by Timothy
Gordon, IH issue 8. Photos by Philip
Clayton-Thompson. Drawings by Martha
Garstang Hill.
pp. 92–93: Design Gallery: Timeless
Character by Sarah Susanka, FHB
issue 227. Photos by Brian Vanden Brink.
pp. 94–97: A Cottage Fit for a Hobbit
by Debra Judge Silber, FHB issue 186.
Photos courtesy of Archer & Buchanan.
pp. 99–105: Small-House Secrets by
Charles Miller, FHB issue 238. Photos by
Charles Miller except for photos p. 105
by David Wakely. Drawing by Martha
Garstang Hill.
pp. 106–111: Big River, Small House by
Russell Hamlet, FHB issue 211. Photos by
Charles Miller except for photo p. 110
(left) courtesy of Russell Hamlet. Draw-
ings by Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 112–119: Passive House Perfection
by Justin Pauly, FHB issue 235. Photos by
Rob Yagid except for photo p. 113 by Rich
Pharaoh. House plan drawings by Martha
Garstang Hill; construction drawings by
Don Mannes.
pp. 120–124: A Small, Spacious House
for a Skinny City Lot by Roxana Vargas-
Greenan and Trent Greenan, FHB
issue 196. Photos by John Ross.
Drawings by Don Mannes.
pp. 125–-129: A Tiny Addition for a Grow-
ing Family by Tina Govan, FHB issue 197.
Photos by Rob Yagid except for photos
pp. 125, 126, and 129 (bottom) by James
West. Drawing p. 127 (top) by Bruce
Morser; drawing p. 127 (bottom) by
Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 130-137: A New Floor Plan Saves an
Old House by Parker Platt, FHB issue 229.
Photos by Rob Yagid except for photo
p. 130 by Kevin Meechean and photos
pp. 131 and 137 (top) courtesy of Parker
Platt. Drawings by Dan Thornton.
pp. 138–145: A Better House Not a Big-
ger One by Sigrid Simonson, IH issue 14.
Photos by Jennifer Cheung. Drawings by
Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 146–153: Build Like This by Matthew
O’Malia, FHB issue 232. Photos by Brian
Vanden Brink. Floor plan drawing by
Martha Garstang Hill; construction
drawing by Bruce Morser.
pp. 154–156: Design Gallery: The neigh-
bor out back by Michael Fifield, FHB issue
203. Photos by mikedeanphoto.com.
Drawing by Martha Garstang Hill.
pp. 157–158: Finishing Touches: Too big
for a jewel box, almost too small for a
house, by Charles Bickford, FHB
issue 136. Photos by Charles Bickford.
pp. 160–162: Design Gallery: The water-
shed by Erin Moore, FHB issue 203.
Photos by J. Gary Tarleton except for
photo p. 162 (top) by Frank Moore.
Drawing by Erin Moore.
pp. 163–165: Getaways: Baking studio
alfresco by Ruth Lively, IH issue 2. Photos
by Saxon Holt.
pp. 166–167: Finishing Touch: A tree
house that's fit for the birds by Maureen
Friedman, FHB issue 236. Photos by
Nat Rea.
pp. 168–169: Project Gallery: Great
work outdoors by Maureen Friedman,
FHB issue 229. Photos courtesy of
Cheryl Smeja.
pp. 170–171: Off the Grid, on the Shore
by Maureen Friedman, FHB issue 204.
Photos by Obie Bowman.
pp. 172–174: Design Gallery: Small spaces
that are great places by David Edrington,
FHB issue 203. Photos by Kent Peterson.
Drawing by David Edrington.
p. 175: Project Gallery: Studio, storage,
and more by Maureen Friedman, issue
214. Photos by Norman Lee.
p. 176: Shinto Shed by Maureen Fried-
man, FHB issue 224. Photos courtesy of
Charles Walters Photo.
pp. 177–181: Project Gallery: Stylish
sheds by Maureen Friedman, FHB issue
224 and Finishing Touches: The benefits
of a smaller scale by Charles Bickford,
FHB issue 161. Photos pp. 177 and 180
(top right) by Brian Vanden Brink, photo
p. 178 (top) by Karen and Greg Metzger,
photos pp. 178 (bottom) and 181 (bot-
tom) by Charles Miller, photo p. 179 (top)
by Philip Bowman, photo p. 179 (center)
by Peter Hemp, photo p. 179 (bottom) by
Rory McDonnell, photo p. 180 (top left)
by Nick Poepping, photo p. 180 (bottom)
by Michael Shipe, and photo p. 181 (top)
courtesy of Scott LePage Photography.
c r e d i t s   185
 index

A expanding the feel of a room with, 129 Sigrid and Bob’s “beach house,” 140
Additions to existing houses, 125–130 French, 16, 18, 19, 31, 34, 36, 40 space-saving features for a small, 60
Affordability glass, 84, 91 Wendy and Bill’s sustainable retirement
as a balancing act, 124 for a Hobbit’s cottage, 97 home, 148
designing for high performance and, pocket, 141 the Widners’ carriage house, 80
147–149, 152 Driveways, turf surface for, 66 the Winston’s new house, 7
Foundations
B E floating, 110
Barns Energy efficiency and/or environmental insulated slab-on-grade, 74, 148–149
bank, Baby Barn based on, 16–20 concerns. See Sustainability insulation for, 62
shed, Gothic dairy-barn style, 179 sloped site and, 16
Bathrooms F Furniture, 144–145
functional and beautiful, 152 Finishes
ladder, reached by a, 15 aesthetics and, 152 G
lighting, 83 exterior Gardens
shower, that turn into a, 154 long-lasting, 54 cottage in, 50–57
upgrading and adding a master bath, low-maintenance stucco, 64, 65–66 greenhouse and writing studio, 170–171
134–135 Maine coast-appropriate, 76–77 the home, as the crucial ingredient of, 89
subtle for cabinets and ceilings, 101 linking house and, 51
C Fireplaces outdoor rooms and, 78–79 (see also
Cabins as centerpieces, 18–19, 20, 36 Outdoor spaces)
chainsaw joinery on, 48 concrete sanded smooth, 33 potting shed, 180
crank-up window in contemporary, 43 copper-clad, 36 sheds for, 172–174, 178, 180
do-it-yourself, 40–42 propane-fired stainless steel, 47 windows overlooking, 80–81, 88
factory-built, 46–47 Rumford, 12–13, 19, 20 Guesthouse
log, 34–36 Floor plan(s) the Baby Barn, 16–20
playful marshland, 34–36 the Baby Bank Barn, 18 houseboat as, 106–111
post-and-beam, 31–33 the Baer’s remodel, 5 moving and converting a small house
Carriage houses, 78–83 Cathy Schwabe’s small house, 102 into, 137
Ceilings Craftsman-style bungalow, before and tree house as, 166–167
exposed, 126 after remodeling a, 132 Guest room
plaster, 69 David’s stacked and compact cottage, 65 captain’s bed that transforms into, 138,
radiant panels mounted in, 61 function-packed, 11–13, 47 139
raised, 100, 141–142 the Govan’s addition, 127 home office and, problem of combining,
vaulted, 11, 82, 83, 84, 85, 108, 109, 114 the Green’s houseboat, 107 24
Cottages Hanna’s studio apartment, 156 quilting studio that converts into, 86
garden, 50–57 Julie and Rob’s garden cottage, 57
for a Hobbit, 94–97 the Kimballs’ big little cabin, 11 H
pocket-sized, 84–91 Leslie’s pocket-size house, 91 Handrails, 12, 13, 69
stacked and compact, 63–69 marshland cabin, 36 Home offices, 24, 25, 26, 86–87, 92
21st century, 70–77 Mica and Laureen’s Passive House, 114 Houseboats, 106–111
with timeless character, 92–93 Michael and Peg’s do-it-yourself retreat, “Human scale,” 53
Cupolas, 19 42
narrow urban infill house for a skinny I
D lot, 121 Insulated-concrete forms (ICFs), 65
Doors the Nobles’ evolving house, phases of,
barn, 82 24–25
custom-made rolling screen, 168, 169 Rob and Fiona’s 21st century cottage, 73

186  
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J P
Japanese architecture
Shinto shed, 176
Tatami rooms, 128, 129
tiny traditional house, 157–158
K a Craftsman-style bungalow, 131–137
Kitchen(s)
a baking studio, 163–165
cabinets, taller than standard, 142
compact, 13–14, 15, 115, 123
daylight from exterior walls, 55
efficient and informal, 62
opening up and adding storage, 132, 133
planning, 80
storage in compact, 67–69
L Seismic concerns, 65
Layouts
Danning’s island cabin and out
buildings, 28
floor plans (see Floor plans)
the Govan’s addition, 127
Julie and Rob’s backyard home, 50
Leslie’s pocket-size house and garden, 89
Prentiss’s cabin in the trees, 33
Lighting
from clerestory windows, 100
natural, impact of, 108, 128
open two-story core of a house and
natural, 122, 123
skylights, 12–13, 44, 83, 134–135, 141
soft from windows, 31
sustainability and, 54–55
translucent walls, 46
Long-term projects
additions and renovations, results of,
44–45
advantages of, 19–20
building in phases, 21–27
M benefits of a smaller scale, 177
Mudrooms, 61, 87, 114, 115
O quality over quantity in a new home, 3,
Outbuildings
cord-wood masonry used to build, 179
multipurpose, 180
straw-bale walls and sod roof used to
build, 181
for wood-fired boiler and hot tub, 178
See also Sheds; Studios
Outdoor spaces
access to as a priority, 51
connection to, 53
expanding the living area with, 104–105,
143
outdoor rooms, 78, 88, 89, 106–107, 129
sheltering eaves providing, 36
shower, outdoor, 87, 89
Ovens
GE Advantium 120, 14
wood-fired, 163–165
Passive Houses, 112, 117–119, 147
Playhouse, 180
R Studio(s)
Remodeling
quality over quantity of space when,
2–3, 4–5
Roofs
long overhangs, 11, 12, 51, 53, 88, 176
low-maintenance, 66
rain-gathering, 161, 162
sod, 181
solar panels on, 52
S the GO Home, 147
Shear-wall panels, 124
Sheds
garden, 172–174, 178, 180
Gothic dairy-barn style, 179
modern glass house, to complement, 181
potting, 180
the queen’s magical, 179
Shinto, 176
storage, 175
Small house(s)
“beach house,” better but not bigger,
139–145
Craftsman-style bungalow, 131–137
design strategies for, 99–105, 106–110
a houseboat, 106–111
a Passive House, 112–119
for skinny city lots, 120–124
a studio apartment, 154–156
sustainable retirement home, 146–153
traditional Japanese style, 157–158
See also Additions to existing houses;
Cottages
Space
new homes, reason for escalating size
of, 3
6–7, 139–145
quality over quantity when remodeling,
2–3, 4–5
softening boundaries to create multiuse,
125, 127
strategies for making small seem roomy,
57, 59–60, 84–91, 99–105, 106–
110, 140, 148
See also Floor plan(s); Layouts
Storage
bedroom, 158
built-in, 14, 90, 142
in cabinets on interior walls, 55
hidden, space efficiency and, 128
kitchen, 62, 133, 149
maximizing in limited space, 67–68
in mudroom, 61, 87
remodeling older houses to increase,
136–137
shed, 175
under sleeping area, 11, 13
in tansu-style staircase, 81
Studio apartments, 154–156
baking, 163–165
storage shed that transforms into
outdoor, 175
writing, 160–162, 170–171, 177
Sustainability
affordability and, designing for, 147–
149, 152
better home, elements of, 150–151
design and construction for, 73, 75
energy costs, steps for reducing, 124
features providing, 54
high-performance design, details of, 74
LEED Platinum rating, 70
off-the-grid multipurpose building and,
170–171
Passive Houses
fear of, 112
slashing energy use in, 117–119
tight envelope and energy efficiency,
60–61, 62
writing studio that sits lightly on the
landscape, 160–162
T
Tatami rooms, 128, 129
Teahouses, 168–169
Treehouses, 166–167
W
Windows
bringing in light with, 31, 104, 128
clerestory
lighting from, 100, 129
ventilation from, 154
determining the view from, 160
floor-to-ceiling, 44, 45
gear-drive opening mechanism for 30-ft.
by 20-ft., 43
high-performance, 153
hinged at the top, 37, 39
for a Hobbit’s cottage, 94–95
oversize in a small house, 110
passive heating through, 75
tall, impact of, 16, 20, 44
i n d e x   187
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HOUSE & HOME

Make your home

a getaway
Connect to the outdoors
Get the most from every space
Save on energy costs
Rethink storage

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Spaces provides you with strategies that will help you make the most of your small space
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